Future of apps for patient self-management uncertain, may rely on specialized functions
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The longevity of apps and programs aimed at helping patients achieve self-management remains uncertain, according to speakers at a debate session during the EULAR 2023 Congress.
“When you’re tracking [data], it is almost like it’s is the beginning of self-management,” Peter Boyd, services support officer of Arthritis Ireland, and a patient with rheumatoid arthritis, said during a debate discussing the viability of apps for managing patients with rheumatic diseases. “I think this is why there is a difficulty in the long-term viability of many apps, because as you get more empowered and better at self-management, the necessity to keep writing things down and keep track decreases.”
Although self-management apps may help patients to better understand their disease and come to a place where they can effectively manage it with the app, that familiarity may cause patients to stop using them.
“You don’t need to put as much information into the app, which means you don’t go to the app every day or every week,” Boyd said. “You end up in a situation where those apps have gone to mute, and eventually, deleted from your account.”
However, if an app has served its purpose, an audience member said during a Q&A session, there might be no harm if apps are not used chronically.
“If I get to the point where I am feeling good and there is no more use for this app and it has served its purpose, then I am grateful for it in the time I needed it,” Boyd said. “But now I am in a position where I am stronger as an advocate and a self-manager, so it has served its purpose.”
The broad nature of self-management makes the question a little less clear, though.
“When we say self-management, it is really a broad concept,” said Yeliz Prior, PhD, BSc, a professor of clinical rehabilitation at the University of Salford, in the United Kingdom. “The apps will have to be quite specific, I think, and their uses will have to be tailored.”
One solution, Prior said, is through apps that can be prescribed and made available to patients who could gain the most from their intended functions.
“Some of them would be short-term, some of them could be longer,” Prior said. “It could be prescribed, almost like a social prescription for a period of time.”
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Nikiphorou E, et al. Debate: Barriers and facilitators to app use: How can we do better? Presented at: EULAR 2023 Congress; May 31 to June 3, 2023, Milan, Italy.
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