Health Literacy-Based Heart Failure Self-care (H2Lit) Application: Development and Usability Testing

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Health Informatics
• Patient Education

Background:

• Heart failure self-care is crucial for patient outcomes.
• Health literacy significantly impacts a patient's ability to manage chronic conditions.
• Existing interventions may not adequately address the needs of patients with low health literacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development of the H2Lit (Health Literacy-focused Heart Failure) web-based app.
• To assess the usability of the H2Lit app among diverse user groups.
• To evaluate the app's potential for improving heart failure self-care.

Main Methods:

• An iterative development approach was used for the H2Lit app over four testing rounds.
• Participants included healthy individuals and patients with heart failure.
• Usability was assessed using the System Usability Scale (SUS) via an online platform.

Main Results:

• The H2Lit app demonstrated varying usability scores across testing rounds (Round 1: 74.1, Round 2: 54.3, Round 3: 85.3, Round 4: 82.5).
• Final usability scores were comparable between participants with adequate and low health literacy.
• The intervention was iteratively refined based on user feedback.

Conclusions:

• The H2Lit web-based app shows potential as a usable tool for heart failure self-care.
• Further research is required to establish the intervention's efficacy on patient outcomes.
• Health literacy considerations are integral to developing effective digital health tools.