Design and Assessment of an Electronic Bladder Diary for Collecting Patient Reported Symptoms Regarding Overactive...

Area of Science:

• Urology
• Medical Informatics
• Patient-Reported Outcomes

Background:

• Overactive bladder (OAB) symptom management relies on accurate patient-reported data.
• Traditional paper bladder diaries (BDs) are time-consuming and prone to recall bias.
• Electronic health records offer potential for improved data collection and patient engagement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design a web-based electronic bladder diary (eBD) for collecting OAB symptom data.
• To evaluate the reliability and user acceptance of the eBD compared to a paper BD.
• To identify design modifications for enhancing the eBD's utility.

Main Methods:

• A web-based eBD was developed to capture voiding frequency, urgency, incontinence, and fluid intake.
• A crossover reliability study compared the eBD and paper BD in 19 healthy participants.
• Diary quality was assessed by completeness and correctness; user preferences were surveyed.

Main Results:

• The eBD recorded significantly fewer voids than the paper BD (p<0.001), indicating a systematic bias.
• Diary quality was comparable between the electronic and paper formats.
• 53% of participants preferred the electronic bladder diary.

Conclusions:

• The designed eBD shows comparable quality and user preference to paper BDs.
• Current eBD design requires modifications, such as data entry editing and restrictions, to improve accuracy.
• Future iterations could streamline OAB data collection and analysis for clinicians and patients.