Design of the Feedback Engine for a Diabetes Self-care Smartphone App

Chronic disease management is a serious problem, both for patients with such a disease and for the healthcare delivery system. Technology, in particular smartphones, could be a key part of the solution because it is available when needed to help patients with daily monitoring and care of their chronic conditions. We are designing and developing a smartphone app to support patients with advanced type 2 diabetes. This paper reports the design of the feedback engine for our app. We created a feedback model based on (1) Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and Goal Setting Theory, which are often used as a basis for behavioral health interventions, (2) advice from medical experts, and (3) preferences of patients collected via focus groups. We report the dimensions of our feedback model and the rationale for each, as well as how those dimensions are operationalized in the feedback engine.

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