Development of a Self-Management App for People with Spinal Cord Injury

With decreasing inpatient rehabilitation lengths of stay, there may be a greater risk of spinal cord injury (SCI) populations being discharged into the community without the self-management skills needed to prevent secondary complications. Recent advancements in mobile health has made mobile apps a feasible method of delivering population-based, self-management interventions to address SCI-specific secondary complications. The objective of this study is to describe stakeholder perspectives on the development of a functional mobile app to facilitate self-management skills needed to prevent secondary complications following recent SCI during inpatient rehabilitation. A user-centered design approach was used that involved an evolving mobile app and the collection of prospective qualitative data. Stakeholders from three groups were enrolled in the study: individuals admitted for rehabilitation following SCI (n = 20) and informal (n = 7) and formal (n = 48) caregivers. Iterative feedback was gathered from rehabilitation inpatients during ongoing interactions and via post-discharge exit questionnaires, from informal caregivers via one-on-one interviews, and from formal caregivers via series of focus groups at various phases throughout the design process. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) being individualized and user friendly (i.e., developing an app that is simple and easy to use to facilitate universal uptake), (2) targeting goals to promote self-management (i.e., adopting self-management skills relative to personal goals and confidence), and (3) increasing participation and support-seeking to facilitate lifestyle change (i.e., encouraging leisure activities to facilitate community integration). Key stakeholder perspectives contributed to the development of a self-management mobile app that will be evaluated in future research.