Limitations of Existing Dialysis Diet Apps in Promoting User Engagement and Patient Self-Management: Quantitative Content Analysis Study

BACKGROUND: With the unprecedented growth of mobile technology, a plethora of dialysis diet apps have been developed to promote patient dietary self-management. Nevertheless, the utility of such apps remains questionable.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the content, features, and quality of commercial dialysis diet apps for adult dialysis patients.

METHODS: This study consisted of a quantitative content analysis of commercial dialysis diet apps downloaded from Google Play and the Apple App Store available in the Asian marketplace, searched for using the following keywords in English: dialysis diet and diet for kidney disease. Free and paid apps available in English that provide nutrition information for adult dialysis patients were included. Apps that were not relevant to the dialysis diet, not meant for patient self-management, or redundant were excluded. Apps were evaluated for language medium (subscore=1), credibility (subscore=1), food database (subscore=1), valuable features (subscore=12), health-behavior theory constructs (subscore=60), and technical quality (subscore=25). The relationships among the variables of interest were determined by Pearson correlation. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed to identify the features that contribute to greater technical quality of dialysis diet apps. Statistical significance was defined as P