Self-management app improves asthma control, quality of life

Key takeaways:

• Greater improvements in asthma control and quality of life occurred among patients using a smartphone app vs. receiving usual care.
• Clinically meaningful improvements were only found in the app group.

Patients with asthma managing their disease through a smartphone app had greater improvements in asthma control and quality of life than patients receiving usual care, according to results published in Respiratory Medicine.

“This adds to growing data indicating smartphone-based solutions can effectively supplement traditional asthma management when thoughtfully designed,” Mehrdad Farzandipour, PhD, MS, assistant professor at Kashan University of Medical Sciences in Iran, and colleagues wrote.

In a single-blind, randomized controlled trial, Farzandipour and colleagues evaluated 60 patients with asthma to see how a smartphone asthma self-management app impacts asthma control and quality of life.

Of the total cohort, 30 patients (mean age, 39.03 years; 19 women) used the app and received their regular treatment, whereas the remaining 30 patients (mean age, 40.4 years; 20 women) solely received usual care.

Researchers had all patients complete the Asthma Control Test (ACT) and the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire-Marks (AQLQ-M) at baseline, 3 months and 6 months to chart changes in both assessments.

Both groups had similar asthma durations, with an average of 6.9 years in the group using the app and an average of 6.77 years in the group receiving usual care.

Asthma control

Between baseline and the 3-month follow-up, researchers observed significant improvements in asthma control among patients receiving usual care (mean ACT score, 18.3 points to 18.63 points) and patients using the app (mean ACT score, 17.8 points to 20.23 points).

Improved asthma control was further found when comparing baseline assessments with 6-month assessments in both the usual care group (mean ACT score, 18.3 points to 19.53 points) and the app group (mean ACT score, 17.8 points to 23 points). Between the two groups, patients using the app had significantly greater improvements in this score (P = .003).

Within the app group, the minimum clinically important difference value for mean ACT score at 3 months was 2.4 points, and the value at 6 months was 1.06 points. After subtracting the 3-month value from the baseline value, researchers found a difference of 2.43 points, which exceeded the set threshold. The difference of 5.2 points at 6 months also went above the value set for this time. These results signal clinically meaningful improvement.

Clinically meaningful improvement in asthma control was not observed in the usual care group, the researchers said.

Quality of life

Similar to asthma control, quality of life significantly improved between baseline and 3 months among patients receiving usual care (mean AQLQ-M score, 38.47 points to 37.9 points) and patients using the asthma self-management app (mean AQLQ-M score, 40 points to 32.57 points).

Even more improvement was observed between baseline and 6 months in the usual care group (mean AQLQ-M score, 38.47 points to 35.33 points) and in the app group (mean AQLQ-M score, 40 points to 20.37 points), with significantly larger improvements in the app group (P < .001).

The minimum clinically important difference value for mean AQLQ-M score at 3 months was 5.9 points in the app group, and this was exceeded (7.43 points). With a difference of 19.63 points in AQLQ-M between baseline and 6 months, researchers noted that this went over the minimum clinically important difference value of 2.84 points and signaled clinically meaningful improvement.

Again, the usual care group did not demonstrate clinically meaningful improvement in quality of life.

Researchers further found “greater enhancement” of both outcomes among patients using the asthma self-management app during analysis of variance with repeated measurements.

“Further research in larger, more diverse asthma populations, as well as other respiratory diseases like COPD, will help elucidate the full potential of these interventions,” Farzandipour and colleagues wrote.