Development of diabetes telephone-linked care system for self-management support and acceptability test among type 2 diabetic patients

Abstract

Objective: Develop the diabetes telephone-linked care system for self-management support and test acceptability in terms of system uses, satisfaction and perception of easiness, helpfulness, and emotion with the system.

Material and method: The automated telephone system with diabetes knowledge interactive voice response (IVR) subsystem was developed to provide diversified curriculum arrangement including general knowledge module (Knowledge IVR, suggestive segment module (Suggestive IVR) and 10 QA sets for assessment with tailored information feedback (QA IVR). The system could deliver 1,120 messages over five weeks among 112 intervened participants of the on-going randomized controlled trial on its impact on glycemic control. The system analyzed the level of completed responses.

Results: Overall, 25.9% of the responses were intermittent, 46.4% had consistent adherences, 14.3% were poor responses, and 13.4% were non-responses. The total time use of the system, among 97/112 participants, was 6,189 minutes (mean 63.80, SD 26 63). The degree of call completeness did not vary according to the participant's socio-economic status, glycemic level, or years of diabetes diagnosis. The satisfaction of participants to the program was done by interviewed by telephone among 95 of 112 participants. Most study participants reported that they were very/moderately satisfied with the program (89.5%) regarding its usefulness and helpfulness on awareness, understanding and reminding behavior change attempts. In all, 95.8% of the responders planned to participate in the next program. Duration of time uses of the TLC was significantly correlated to the total scores of helpfulness and of emotion (p < 0.01; r = 0.38 and 0.31 respectively).

Conclusion: This prototype of diabetes telephone-linked care for Thai diabetes is a step forward in response to diabetes self-management education need. Further studies are needed about its efficacies on diabetes self-management improvement and glycemic control, as well as its cost-effectiveness.