Mobile health application based intervention for improvement of quality of life among newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients

Abstract

Background. Diabetes and its complications arebecoming a major threat to public health. Quality of life among diabetes patients is not optimum. Objective. To know the usefulness of the mobile health application for improvement of QoL and diabetes selfmanagement activities of the type 2 diabetes patients. Methods. The present study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital for 2 years from October 2016 to October 2018. In this study, 66 newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients, educated, techno-friendly smart phone users, aged between 18–60 years, were included. They were allocated to intervention and control group by block randomization method. Intervention group was allotted to use the android application and control group was allotted to use the website. The data were imported and analyzed by SPSS v 20. Results. Overall quality of life and general health was 70.26 ± 16.51; for physical health it was 59.52 ± 7.15, for psychological it was 63.38 ± 9.2, for social relations it was 74.87 ± 13.98 and for environment it was 71.87 ± ± 8.38. The score of overall quality of life was increased in both control and intervention group during follow-ups. It was found that there was significant improvement in glucose management, dietary control, physical activity, health care use and sum score. Wilk’s lambda was significant for HbA1c both in control and intervention group. Conclusions. Mobile-based applications with focusing on diabetes self-management education may support to reduce the complications of diabetes and improve the QoL of diabetes patients.