BACKGROUND
Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a common cause of mortality worldwide: each year, the chronic disease kills over one million people, making it the ninth leading cause of death. The growing use of smartphone applications (apps) led to focusing on mobile health, which is increasingly oriented towards self-care of T2DM. With smartphone apps, patients can improve their self-care behavior and prevent complications of the disease.
OBJECTIVE
This research aims to search, analyze, and evaluate the quality of existing smartphone apps for self-care of diabetic patients to improve disease control and health status.
METHODS
In the Google Play Store and iPadian emulator, we systematically searched for Android and iOS smartphone apps. Smartphone apps that met the inclusion criteria were analyzed and evaluated with the American Association of Diabetes Educators’ self-care tool and the user version of the Mobile App Rating Scale, which assesses the integration of self-care behavior functions, and overall quality, respectively.
RESULTS
Out of 798 smartphone apps, we identified 12 relevant smartphone apps that included 51 out of 88 predefined self-care behavior functions. The average score for overall quality was 3.76/5 (SD=0.31), and the smartphone apps WeCheck -Diabetes lifelog, Blood Glucose Level, Smart e-SMBG - Diabetes lifelog, and Blood Glucose contained the most self-care behavior functions.
CONCLUSIONS
We argue that T2DM monitoring can be improved by implementing the correct quantity of self-care behavior functions and including elements related to the prevention of complications due to the T2DM.