MyFootCare: An application to actively engage people in their diabetic foot ulcer self-care

NewsBot · Mar 14, 2023

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Development of MyFootCare: A smartphone application to actively engage people in their diabetic foot ulcer self-care
van Netten, Jaap J., Brown, Ross A., Si da Seng, Leonard, Lazzarini, Peter A., & Ploderer, Bernd (2018)
Annual Dutch Diabetes Research Meeting, 29-30 November 2018, Oosterbeek, The Netherlands.

Background: New strategies are needed to engage people in the self-care of their diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). We aimed to develop and evaluate the usability and usefulness of a new smartphone application to engage people with DFUs in self-care.

Methods: We developed “MyFootCare”, a smartphone application to engage patients through goal-setting, progress monitoring, and reminders (Fig.1). Key feature was the novel visual analytics to extract and monitor DFU size from mobile phone photos (Fig.2). A functional prototype was evaluated through a user-centred design process with 11 participants with DFUs, via semi-structured interviews discussing existing self-care practices and observations of MyFootCare. Data were analysed qualitatively through thematic analysis.

Results: Key themes were: (1) Participants already used mobile phone photos to monitor their DFU progress, but (2) had limited experience with smartphone applications. (3) Participants desired the objective DFU size data provided. (4) Participants were ambivalent about the goal setting and diary features. (5) Participants desired to share their MyFootCare data with clinicians to demonstrate engagement in self-care and reflect on their progress.

Discussion/Conclusion: MyFootCare shows promising features to engage people in DFU self-care. Most notably, ulcer size data is useful to monitor progress and engage people. More work is needed to improve the usability and accuracy of MyFootCare, by refining the process of taking and analysing DFU photos and removing unnecessary features. These findings open the door for further work to develop an application that is easy to use and functions in daily life.
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NewsBot · Mar 14, 2023

Self-Monitoring Diabetes-Related Foot Ulcers with the MyFootCare App: A Mixed Methods Study
Bernd Ploderer et al
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Feb 24;23(5):2547

People with diabetes-related foot ulcers (DFUs) need to perform self-care consistently over many months to promote healing and to mitigate risks of hospitalisation and amputation. However, during that time, improvement in their DFU can be hard to detect. Hence, there is a need for an accessible method to self-monitor DFUs at home. We developed a new mobile phone app, "MyFootCare", to self-monitor DFU healing progression from photos of the foot. The aim of this study is to evaluate the engagement and perceived value of MyFootCare for people with a plantar DFU over 3 months' duration. Data are collected through app log data and semi-structured interviews (weeks 0, 3, and 12) and analysed through descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Ten out of 12 participants perceive MyFootCare as valuable to monitor progress and to reflect on events that affected self-care, and seven participants see it as potentially valuable to enhance consultations. Three app engagement patterns emerge: continuous, temporary, and failed engagement. These patterns highlight enablers for self-monitoring (such as having MyFootCare installed on the participant's phone) and barriers (such as usability issues and lack of healing progress). We conclude that while many people with DFUs perceive app-based self-monitoring as valuable, actual engagement can be achieved for some but not for all people because of various facilitators and barriers. Further research should target improving usability, accuracy and sharing with healthcare professionals and test clinical outcomes when using the app.
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NewsBot · Mar 14, 2023

Promoting Self-Care of Diabetic Foot Ulcers Through a Mobile Phone App: User-Centered Design and Evaluation.
Ploderer B et al
JMIR Diabetes. 2018 Oct 10;3(4):e10105. doi: 10.2196/10105.

BACKGROUND:
Without effective self-care, people with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are at risk of prolonged healing times, hospitalization, amputation, and reduced quality of life. Despite these consequences, adherence to DFU self-care remains low. New strategies are needed to engage people in the self-care of their DFUs.

OBJECTIVE:
This study aimed to evaluate the usability and potential usefulness of a new mobile phone app to engage people with DFUs in self-care.

METHODS:
We developed a new mobile phone app, MyFootCare, to engage people with DFUs through goals, progress monitoring, and reminders in self-care. Key features included novel visual analytics that automatically extract and monitor DFU size information from mobile phone photos of the foot. A functional prototype of MyFootCare was created and evaluated through a user-centered design process with 11 participants with DFUs. Data were collected through semistructured interviews discussing existing self-care practices and observations of MyFootCare with participants. Data were analyzed qualitatively through thematic analysis.

RESULTS:
Key themes were as follows: (1) participants already used mobile phone photos to monitor their DFU progress; (2) participants had limited experience with using mobile phone apps; (3) participants desired the objective DFU size data provided by the tracking feature of MyFootCare to monitor their DFU progress; (4) participants were ambivalent about the MyFootCare goal image and diary features, commenting that these features were useful but also that it was unlikely that they would use them; and (5) participants desired to share their MyFootCare data with their clinicians to demonstrate engagement in self-care and to reflect on their progress.

CONCLUSIONS:
MyFootCare shows promising features to engage people in DFU self-care. Most notably, ulcer size data are useful to monitor progress and engage people. However, more work is needed to improve the usability and accuracy of MyFootCare, that is, by refining the process of taking and analyzing photos of DFUs and removing unnecessary features. These findings open the door for further work to develop a system that is easy to use and functions in everyday life conditions and to test it with people with DFUs and their carers.
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