The use of evidence based recommendation in diabetes self-management applications design: a review of literatures and diabetes mobile applications

Background: Interest in mobile health applications increases the use of them in the field of management of chronic disaese such as diabetes mellitus and is still growing. Despite the growth of diabetes mobile applications, several challenges make the reduction in the clinical effectiveness of them that should be addressed. On of the most important factor is the lack of using evidence based recommendations in designing and implementing of apps. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to review the related studies and evaluate to what extent diabetes mobile applications based on evidence based guideline. Materials/Patients and Methods: A review of studies in the field of diabetes self- management guidelines was done. We choose the American diabetes guideline AADE7TM as a base of survey. Because it is one of the perfect examples of evidence-based framework and include: (1) healthy eating, (2) being active, (3) monitoring, (4) taking medications, (5) problem solving, (6) reducing risks, and (7) healthy coping. Then we searched google android market. We included applications at least have a component of self-monitoring of blood glucose and excluded applications without English language user interfaces. We then contrasted the prevalence use of recommendation of evidence based guidelines in them. Results: In most cases of surveys, adequate compare and review about existing programs with evidence-based clinical frameworks for design, deployment and implementation of diabetes applications were not performed. Also, most existing programs have a shortcoming in essential component of evidence based clinical practice. To overcome this problem develop a force to implement a preclinical models as a basic model is helpful in the production process applications. Conclusion: Smart phone apps can be useful tools in the management of diabetes, but they need to better incorporate with evidence based self-management models. These models can be used as a blueprint for effective designing and deployment applications in order to develop and evaluate the appropriateness care. It seems some obligation on the quality based on clinical provisions or inclusion of evidence-based strategies for diabetes self-management apps is needed.