Exploring health literacy needs in Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): Associations between demographic, clinical variables, psychological well-being and health literacy

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients often present considerable individual medical burden in their symptoms, limitations, and well-being that complicate medical treatment. Quality of life (QOL) is an important aspect for measuring the impact of chronic diseases. HRQOL measurement facilitates the evaluation of efficacy of medical interventions and also the detection of groups at risk of psychological or behavioural problems.Methods: COPD patient attending the OPD/IPD are screened as per inclusion and exclusion criteria. After obtaining a written informed consent of eligible patient, they were enrolled in the study. QOL of patient is assessed based on a set of questionnaire i.e. COPD Assessment Test™ (CAT). The questionnaire was translated to Hindi and Marathi. Socio demographic variable like age, sex, education occupation and income are also collected. All 8 questions related to health-improvement and management of COPD. CAT scores were given to each question according to the level of impact.Results: In the total score of CAT we observed that there were 2.04% patients with very good QOL, 25.51% with good QOL, 61.22% with moderate QOL and 11.22% with poor QOL.Conclusions: We conclude that the quality of life is moderate in larger number of patient’s population. The most affected domain was the patient’s energy level. The patients enrolled had COPD from long period of time which might have affected their answer because they have been habitual with the difficulties arising from COPD.

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Recommendations for Developing Support Tools With People Suffering From Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Co-Design and Pilot Testing of a Mobile Health Prototype

JMIR Human Factors ◽

10.2196/16289 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. e16289

Author(s):

Alan Davies ◽

Julia Mueller ◽

Jean Hennings ◽

Ann-Louise Caress ◽

Caroline Jay

Keyword(s):

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ◽

Pulmonary Disease ◽

Health Care Professionals ◽

Experience Sampling ◽

Well Being ◽

Mobile App ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Chronic Obstructive ◽

Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ◽

App Development

Background Gaps exist between developers, commissioners, and end users in terms of the perceived desirability of different features and functionalities of mobile apps. Objective The objective of this study was to co-design a prototype mobile app for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We present lessons learned and recommendations from working on a large project with various stakeholders to develop a mobile app for patients with COPD. Methods We adopted a user-centered, participatory approach to app development. Following a series of focus groups and interviews to capture requirements, we developed a prototype app designed to enable daily symptom recording (experience sampling). The prototype was tested in a usability study applying the think aloud protocol with people with COPD. It was then released via the Android app store, and experience sampling data and event data were captured to gather further usability data. Results A total of 5 people with COPD participated in the pilot study. Identified themes include familiarity with technology, appropriate levels for feeding back information, and usability issues such as manual dexterity. Moreover, 37 participants used the app over a 4-month period (median age 47 years). The symptoms most correlated to perceived well-being were tiredness (r=0.61; P<.001) and breathlessness (r=0.59; P<.001). Conclusions Design implications for COPD apps include the need for clearly labeled features (rather than relying on colors or symbols that require experience using smartphones), providing weather information, and using the same terminology as health care professionals (rather than simply lay terms). Target users, researchers, and developers should be involved at every stage of app development, using an iterative approach to build a prototype app, which should then be tested in controlled settings as well as in the wild (ie, when deployed and used in real-world settings) over longer periods.

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