P134 Mobile Apps for Hypertension Management: Cross-sectional Survey of Dietitian App Use in Patient Care

Abstract

<h3>Background</h3> Mobile apps show promise for managing chronic diseases such as hypertension; however, more evidence is needed to understand how dietitians are using apps in hypertension care. <h3>Objective</h3> To classify dietitians' incorporation of apps into dietary education for patients with hypertension. <h3>Study Design, Setting, Participants</h3> An online cross-sectional survey of registered dietitian nutritionists who work with patients with cardiovascular disease. <h3>Measurable Outcome/Analysis</h3> App use in hypertension diet education classified with descriptive statistics and Friedman tests with Bonferroni corrections. Dietitian characteristics impacting app use measured through stepwise regression. <h3>Results</h3> A total of 190 completed the survey. The DASH diet was the most common dietary approach used in hypertension education (<i>P</i> < .001). The most commonly recommended app for hypertension education was MyFitnessPal (23%); however, only 36% recommend any apps to patients with hypertension. For comparison, 64% recommended apps for weight management. Few (2%) were extremely satisfied with apps for hypertension management and less than a third were somewhat satisfied (30%). In general, dietitians did use apps for diet tracking, with a third reporting using apps for diet tracking most of the time, and another third sometimes. Dietitians were more likely to recommend apps for diet tracking than pen and paper (<i>P</i> < .001), online programs or websites (<i>P</i> = .01), or computer-based word-processing (<i>P</i> < .001). Stepwise regression analysis showed that as dietitian education level increased, the number of patients that dietitians recommended apps to also increased (R-squared = .04, <i>P</i> = .01). Dietitian age and gender did not significantly predict app use. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Most dietitians are not specifically recommending apps for hypertension management. Those who do use an app are most likely to use MyFitnessPal. Future work should examine the effectiveness of using MyFitnessPal to reduce hypertension and barriers to dietitian satisfaction with apps.