Mobile Apps Providing Tailored Nursing Interventions for Patients with Metabolic Syndrome.

Objectives: This study developed and evaluated four mobile applications (apps) that provide tailored nursing recommendations for metabolic syndrome management.

Methods: Mobile apps for obesity, gestational diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia management were developed according to the system development life cycle and evaluations by experts and users.

Results: Six lifestyle management and five disease-specific knowledge domains were extracted. Functions such as 'Log in' and 'Record data using diary' to be used in all of the apps were extracted, while disease-specific functions were also extracted, including 'Determine the goal' to be used in the obesity app. The proficiency and efficiency of the algorithms ranged from 69.0 to 100.0. In a heuristics evaluation all of the problems were resolved and all of the usability scores exceeded 3.5 out of 5.

Conclusion: This study demonstrates that metabolic syndrome can be effectively managed using special functions provided by smartphones, such as automatic feedback, alerts, diaries, and social media integration. Future work will include integrating and harmonizing these four apps in order to improve their semantic interoperability.