Sivakumar Bridve, Ricupero Maria, Mahajan Anisha, Jefferson Katherine, Wenger John, Code Jillianne, Theodorou Alex, Arcand JoAnne
Faculty of Health Science, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Canada.
University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Toronto, Canada.
BMC Nutr. 2025 Jul 12;11(1):139. doi: 10.1186/s40795-025-01117-y.
Mobile apps show promise in supporting patients with heart failure (HF) in adhering to dietary guidelines for sodium and fluid. Though numerous apps to support HF management exist, only a few have dedicated features to support dietary adherence.
To describe the process and outcomes from the development and testing of Sodium Navigator, a mobile app intervention to engage patients with HF in dietary education and adherence.
Background research in app development, behaviour change, nutrition and qualitative interviews with patients and healthcare providers informed app content and design. Weekly team meetings were held to establish learning objectives, content, and features of the app until a prototype was developed and approved by the research team. Using a quasi-experimental mixed-methods design, patients with HF (≥ 18 years) evaluated the prototype via one-on-one online user-testing sessions. App engagement, satisfaction, and usability were measured using a 12-question patient-reported Likert-scale questionnaire. Participant feedback on app content and features was gathered using qualitative interviews.
Six educational modules (dietary sodium recommendations, contributors of sodium in the diet, nutrition labelling, lowering dietary sodium, fluid restriction and goal setting), ten behaviour change techniques (e.g., feedback on behaviour, social support) and gamified components (i.e., avatar, point-system) were integrated into the app. Participants with HF (n = 10, 56±15 years, 80% women) enjoyed using the app (90%), strongly agreed that the information was meaningful and useful for their general health (80%) and was easy to use (70%).
Results demonstrate the potential of Sodium Navigator to support patients with dietary education and adherence for HF management.
移动应用程序在支持心力衰竭（HF）患者遵守钠和液体饮食指南方面显示出前景。尽管存在许多支持HF管理的应用程序，但只有少数具有专门支持饮食依从性的功能。
描述钠导航器（Sodium Navigator）的开发和测试过程及结果，这是一种移动应用程序干预措施，旨在让HF患者参与饮食教育和依从性管理。
在应用程序开发、行为改变、营养方面的背景研究以及对患者和医疗保健提供者的定性访谈为应用程序的内容和设计提供了信息。每周举行团队会议，以确定应用程序的学习目标、内容和功能，直到开发出原型并得到研究团队的批准。采用准实验混合方法设计，HF患者（≥18岁）通过一对一在线用户测试会话对原型进行评估。使用一份由患者报告的12个问题的李克特量表问卷来测量应用程序的参与度、满意度和可用性。通过定性访谈收集参与者对应用程序内容和功能的反馈。
六个教育模块（饮食钠推荐、饮食中钠的来源、营养标签、降低饮食钠、液体限制和目标设定）、十种行为改变技巧（如行为反馈、社会支持）和游戏化组件（即头像、积分系统）被整合到应用程序中。HF参与者（n = 10，56±15岁，80%为女性）喜欢使用该应用程序（90%），强烈同意该信息对他们的总体健康有意义且有用（80%），并且易于使用（70%）。
结果表明钠导航器在支持患者进行饮食教育和HF管理依从性方面具有潜力。
