Mobile Health, Disease Knowledge, and Self-Care Behavior in Chronic Kidney Disease: A Prospective Cohort Study

Mobile health (mHealth) management is an emerging strategy of care for patients with chronic diseases. However, the effect of mHealth management on clinical outcomes of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) has not been well-studied. The aim of this study was to investigate the additional influence of mHealth on disease knowledge and self-care behavior in CKD patients who had received traditional education. We designed and developed a new healthcare mobile application, called iCKD, which has several major features, including home-based physiological signal monitoring, disease health education, nutrition analysis, medication reminder, and alarms and a warning system. Trained nurses interviewed patients with CKD using structured questionnaires of disease knowledge and self-care behavior. After propensity score matching, we analyzed 107 patients who used iCKD and traditional education, and 107 who received traditional education. The patients who used iCKD had higher disease knowledge scores than those who received traditional education. In multivariate analysis, iCKD was significantly and positively associated with disease knowledge scores. Patients with high education levels could have greater disease knowledge through using mHealth. There was no significant difference in total scores of self-care behavior between the two groups. In conclusion, mHealth can significantly increase disease knowledge in patients with CKD.