Mobile app helps patients on dialysis with diet adherence
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A mobile app called the Dialysis Pocket Assistant was well received by patients on dialysis needing assistance with diet adherence in Poland, according to data published in the Journal of Renal Nutrition.
“Web-based technologies are expected to soon transform clinical management and improve patient outcomes in many chronic diseases. In particular, mobile applications can effectively facilitate the modification of eating habits and prevention of chronic diseases,” Aleksander Kowal, MD, from the student scientific society affiliated with the department of nephrology, hypertension and kidney transplantation at Central University Hospital, Medical University of Lodz in Poland, and colleagues wrote. “Due to a small number of nutritional mobile applications dedicated to dialysis patients combined with their poor technical quality, limited valuable features, limited food database and low credibility, there is a strong need for a reliable tool that supports the dietary choices of dialysis patients.”
Developed by medical students, the Dialysis Pocket Assistant (DiPA) is a database of products and recipes accessible as a smartphone app. Nephrologists and dieticians contributed to the process, and a validation test was conducted in October of 2020 with 28 patients on dialysis.
The app was launched to Google Play on April 14, 2021, and it has undergone six technical updates. Following the first launch, researchers used internet solutions to collect data on user activity for 12 months. Researchers promoted the app on the internet and directly to patients while also offering a questionnaire to measure the usage of the software. Questionnaire results were scored using a five-point Likert scale.
Ultimately, 841 smartphone users downloaded DiPA. Researchers identified 44.4% of the users from two regions in Poland with the largest populations of patients on hemodialysis. A total of 60 patients on hemodialysis completed the questionnaire.
Analyses of the results revealed all features of DiPa were scored a median of 4 points or more. However, 63.3% of respondents reported a need for particular improvements. Researchers noted that respondents who used hemodialysis for 1 year were more likely to stop using the app after a month than respondents who used hemodialysis for 3.3 years.
Compared with men and those older than 50 years, women and respondents younger than 50 years tended to attribute a positive impact on their diet adherence to DiPA.
“The Polish population of [hemodialysis] patients is interested in dietary mobile applications. Internet-based promotional campaigns had a great impact on this group of patients,” Kowal and colleagues wrote. “In addition, place of residency, age, gender, and dialysis vintage might be factors influencing the use of health mobile applications. The DiPA application appeared to be a useful tool for [hemodialysis] patients, though further development is needed to increase user retention rates and enhance its impact on patient outcomes.”
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