The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Application (SRI App): a pilot randomised controlled trial

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Respiratory Medicine
• Clinical Assessment Tools

Background:

• Chronic respiratory failure poses significant challenges in patient management and data collection.
• Traditional paper-based questionnaires, such as the Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Questionnaire (SRI), are prone to missing data and logistical issues.
• The integration of mobile technology offers potential solutions for improving the efficiency and accuracy of patient-reported outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and develop a mobile application for the Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Questionnaire (SRI).
• To evaluate the practicality, acceptance, and psychometric properties of the SRI app in patients with chronic respiratory failure.
• To compare the performance of the SRI app against the traditional paper-based SRI.

Main Methods:

• Development of a multilingual mobile application for the SRI.
• Conducting a randomized controlled trial with 60 patients diagnosed with chronic respiratory failure.
• Comparing the SRI app with the conventional paper-based SRI in terms of data completeness, reliability, and validity.

Main Results:

• The SRI app was found to be a practical and well-accepted tool among patients.
• The mobile application completely eliminated missing values, a common issue with paper-based assessments.
• Established reliability (Cronbach's alpha: 0.56–0.81 for app, 0.54–0.83 for paper) and convergent/discriminant validities for the SRI app.

Conclusions:

• The SRI mobile application is a viable and effective alternative to the paper-based version for assessing severe respiratory insufficiency.
• The app enhances data quality by preventing missing values and maintains robust psychometric properties.
• The multilingual SRI app is freely available for non-profit research, promoting wider accessibility and adoption in clinical studies.