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Abstract

Background and Method:

This study compared the effects of self-management mHealth (mobile health) apps and conventional intervention (brochure) on the quality of life (QoL) and exercise engagement of patients with breast cancer. Moreover, the current research aimed to investigate how usability improvement in mHealth leads to increased exercise engagement and QoL. To select apps with different level of usability, a heuristic usability testing using was conducted. Three apps with varying scores of usability - low, average, and high- were selected to enter in a randomized control trial (RCT) experiment. We formed 4 groups of intervention including the app with the highest usability (App5), the app with average usability (App4), the app with the lowest usability (App3), and the brochure. In each group, 5 patients, randomly selected from 20 patients, entered to the experiment and started to use the assigned mHealth app for 6 weeks.

Results:

The results showed that QoL scores were significantly higher for all participants in app groups compared to the broacher group. Further analysis of the results showed that the patients in App5 group reported higher QoL compared to patients in App4, App3, and brochure groups. In addition, patients in App5 and App4 groups reported more engagement in physical activities. Self-reported engagement in exercise data was not wholly consistent with engagement data logged by phones. Usability evaluation of apps from the patients’ perspective showed that, similar to heuristic usability, the patients rated App5 with higher usability score. The correlation analysis showed that user usability score was positively correlated with heuristic usability score. Moreover, other correlation analysis revealed that patients who rated the app with higher usability score, reported more commitment to physical activities. These results may imply that, compared to conventional intervention (brochure), mHealth apps engaged the patients in physical activities with a higher degree, and consequently improved their QoL.

Keywords

mHealth Breast Cancer Heuristic Usability User Usability

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