Smart-phone interventions for long-term health management of patients with chronic illness: A content analysis

Objective: The long-term health management is particularly challenging for patients with chronic illness. Adjuvant smart-phone interventions, helping the heath management of patients with chronic illness, therefore, are a promising strategy of long-term treatment for chronic illness. Assuming that different smart-phone interventions were involved in the previous literatures, this review summarizes all aspects of smart-phone applications (apps) so as to provide a general picture in this regards. Methods: Electronic searches were conducted in seven databases. Studies were included only if they were exclusively designed for patients with chronic illness, the intervention is a smart-phone app and incorporated a defined outcome measurement to evaluate the effects of the implemented intervention. Results: Seven studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria, including the studies of chemotherapy-associated side-effects, COPD, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, overweight, breast cancer, and depression. Clinical trials performed in all the studies find that the smart-phone app was completely or at least partially effective in managing the chronic disease it focused on through knowledge improvement, closer participation, professional support attained and et,al. Conclusion: The findings from literature review showed that a promising health-related smart-phone apps intervention involved the consideration of the target population, the training of the intervention providers, the outcome evaluation, the technique support and the comprehensive protocol design specially based on individual needs. Further future studies need to be done in the above regards.