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Efficacy of the mLab App: a randomized clinical trial for increasing HIV testing uptake using mobile technology
Rebecca Schnall1,2, Thomas Foster Scherr3, Lisa M Kuhns4,5
1School of Nursing, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, United States.
Objective:
To determine the efficacy of the mLab App, a mobile-delivered HIV prevention intervention to increase HIV self-testing in MSM and TGW.
Materials And Methods:
This was a randomized (2:2:1) clinical trial of the efficacy the mLab App as compared to standard of care vs mailed home HIV test arm among 525 MSM and TGW aged 18-29 years to increase HIV testing.
Results:
The mLab App arm participants demonstrated an increase from 35.1% reporting HIV testing in the prior 6 months compared to 88.5% at 6 months. In contrast, 28.8% of control participants reported an HIV test at baseline, which only increased to 65.1% at 6 months. In a generalized linear mixed model estimating this change and controlling for multiple observations of participants, this equated to control participants reporting a 61.2% smaller increase in HIV testing relative to mLab participants (P = .001) at 6 months. This difference was maintained at 12 months with control participants reporting an 82.6% smaller increase relative to mLab App participants (P < .001) from baseline to 12 months.
Discussion And Conclusion:
Findings suggest that the mLab App is well-supported, evidence-based, behavioral risk-reduction intervention for increasing HIV testing rates as compared to the standard of care, suggesting that this may be a useful behavioral risk-reduction intervention for increasing HIV testing among young MSM.
Trial Registration:
This trial was registered with Clinicaltrials.gov NCT03803683.
