Identifying the Challenges in Self-Management and Preferences for Digital Health Technologies Use Among COPD Patients...

Digital health technologies offer a promising approach to strengthening self-management capacity among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), yet clinical application is hampered by poor adherence, low sustained engagement, and limited self-management ability. Although previous studies have identified general self-management challenges in COPD, few have systematically investigated patients' preferences for digital tools or translated these insights into actionable design principles. This hinders the user-centred development and effective deployment of digital interventions for this population.

This study aimed to explore the self‑management challenges and preferences for mobile health (mHealth) among COPD patients, with the ultimate goal of translating these findings into design principles for a persuasive self‑management application.

We conducted in-depth personal interviews with 15 patients with COPD and five healthcare professionals to explore the challenges of self-management and preferences for mHealth. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Subsequently, a structured expert consultation was held to translate the findings into key principles for a persuasive self-management application.

Five themes regarding barriers to effective self-management were identified: (1) negative emotional experience, (2) poor health literacy, (3) insufficient family support, (4) inadequate professional health care, and (5) economic burden. Patients expressed four key preferences for digital health technologies: (1) simplicity, (2) personalized decision support, (3) self-report, (4) early warning of deterioration. Furthermore, the panel discussion distilled these findings into eight essential key principles: motivation, simplicity, credibility, guidance, personalization, self-report, warning, and continuity.

This study provides new insights into user-centered mHealth tools for COPD self-management. We derived core design principles from patients' demands to inform targeted digital interventions. These principles require validation in female, higher-literacy and multi-center samples before wide application. Future work will complete the remaining CeHRes Roadmap stages of design, operationalization and evaluation to refine this framework.