Determinants of Longitudinal Adherence in Smartphone-Based Self-Tracking for Chronic Health Conditions: Evidence from Axial Spondyloarthritis

Simon Jones, William Hue, Ryan Kelly, Rosie Barnett, Violet Henderson, Raj Sengupta

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Abstract

The use of interactive mobile and wearable technologies for understanding and managing health conditions is a growing area of interest for patients, health professionals and researchers. Self-tracking technologies such as smartphone apps and wearabledevices for measuring symptoms and behaviours generate a wealth of patient-centric data with the potential to support clinical decision making. However, the utility of self-tracking technologies for providing insight into patients’ conditions is impacted by poor adherence with data logging. This paper explores factors associated with adherence in smartphone-based tracking, drawing on two studies of patients living with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), a chronic rheumatological condition. In Study1, 184 axSpA patients used the uMotif health tracking smartphone app for a period of up to 593 days. In Study 2, 108 axSpA patients completed a survey about their experience of using self-tracking technologies. We identify six significant correlates of self-tracking adherence, providing insight into the determinants of tracking behaviour. Specifically, our data provides evidence that adherence correlates with the age of the user, the types of tracking devices that are being used (smartphone OS and physical activity tracker), preferences for types of data to record, the timing of interactions with a self-tracking app, and the reported symptom severity of the user. We discuss how these factors may have implications for those designing, deploying or using mobile and wearable tracking technologies to support monitoring and management of chronic diseases.
Original languageEnglish
Article number16
JournalPACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
Volume5
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Mar 2021

Funding

This work is supported by funding from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust (Grant Reference: 2316). Any views expressed within this report are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Trust. We gratefully acknowledge UCB for funding use of the uMotif application for the research studies, and the National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society and Bath Institute for Rheumatic Diseases for supporting patient and public engagement aspects of this research. We are grateful to Royal United Hospital, Bath for providing funding towards Violet Henderson’s PhD studentship. We thank the members of the Project Nightingale team and the BathSPARC (Bath Spondyloarthritis Research Consortium) for their input and discussions relating to this research and all of the study participants for their valuable contributions. Due to confidentiality agreements with research collaborators, supporting data can only be made available to bona fide researchers subject to a data sharing agreement. Details of the self-tracking dataset are available at https://www.projectnightingale.org/publications/

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