A Pilot Trial of a Smartphone-based Self-management Support Program for COPD Patients

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the number 3 killer globally by 2020. COPD patients often experience multiple symptoms (e.g. dyspnea, cough, and deteriorating quality of life) and have imposed a substantial economic and social burden on health care. Current policy for the prevention and management of long-term conditions focuses on efforts to prevent the onset or slow progression of disease early in the disease trajectory. This prevention paradigm has only recently been adopted for COPD. Systematic reviews have shown self-management support for patients with COPD is effective in improving health-related quality of life and in reducing hospital admissions, but the evidence comes largely from patients with moderate or severe disease and is predominantly recruited from secondary care. Simple and systematic strategies are needed to improve out-of-hospital support and management for people living with COPD. An instant messaging smartphone app, which allows texts, audio, pictures and video messages to be shared in chat groups, is already available to and is the most popular in the Hong Kong general public. Mobile instant messaging can be conducted through a daily use device to increase access and efficacy, which has been suggested as a feasible approach to delivering an intervention with positive effects on health behaviours and outcomes. Text messaging via mobile phones has been shown to be effective in helping promote lifestyle change in diabetes self-management, weight loss, physical activity, smoking cessation and medication adherence with quantitative and qualitative evidence. However, the investigator has not found messaging intervention that was applied in people with COPD, except an ongoing study of using instant text message support for patients with chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Hence, the current intervention program is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a smartphone-based instant messaging self-management support program to improve the quality of life in patients with COPD.