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Table 5 Summary of responses regarding purposes and challenges experienced by patients and providers when they encountered or used mHealth devices or patient-gathered data

From: How mHealth can facilitate collaboration in diabetes care: qualitative analysis of co-design workshops

Groups

Codes

Summary

Example quotations

Participants with T1D

Purpose

• To identify similar situations

• To identify relationships between parameters, e.g. BG and diet

“Similar situations … I rarely eat ice cream so I can go back and look at how much insulin I took then and how my blood glucose was after” (T1D_P5)

“Seeing patterns about what I ate and did in relation to my blood glucose” (T2D_P2).

Challenge

Lack of support/guidance to interpret data

“The lack of support from the healthcare system”, asking “where is the course where I can learn as a patient? I take more responsibility for my own health when using mHealth tools … [and get] a better overview … But even though I know a lot … I want to know more and I want to do better” (T1D_P1).

Specialists

Purpose

For technology to support patients’ self-learning

“Use of technology needs to create patient action … We want these sort of [patient-gathered] data to be self-learning technology” (Specialist1).

Challenge

Limited capacity

“The number of consultations in our out-patient clinic has increased steadily during the last years. And I remember when I started there almost 20 years ago we had so much more time for patients” (specialist2).

Participants with T2D

Purpose

• To understand long-term effects of lifestyle choices on diabetes health

• To spend less time worrying about their health and more time living

“[I look for] the results for stress level, drinks and such … to find the causes for high blood glucose” over “days, sometimes a month sometimes three months, between the evaluations” (T2D_P1).

“spend less time and energy on self-management” (T2D_P2)

Challenge

• To understand relationships between parameters,

• To trust in technology to function properly,

• Cost (in some cases)

“I document blood glucose in the Diabetes Diary app. Plus, I have it on paper too. I don’t trust electronics. I do double” (T2D_P1)

“I stopped the electronic way because I was abroad and it cost a lot. But I record manually” (T2D_P2).

GPs

Purpose

Not specifically stated

N/A

Challenge

Inconsistency in and lack of patient-gathered data

“They just test three days before, but then stop testing for half a year, and then come back with three lost test-days. Some are testing every day, four times a day … Some have blood pressure monitor at home, that they show me” (GP3)

“I rarely see [paper] diaries with lots of measurements … many of them have Fitbit but I haven’t seen the results from them” (GP2).