Development of a mobile health application for epilepsy self-management: Focus group discussion and validity of study results

Abstract

Mobile health systems in the current digital era can be an opportunity for the development of health services, especially epilepsy, which is expected to help therapy management in monitoring drug therapy. Mobile health-based interventions have now begun to be developed for chronic disease management in managing stress, monitoring drug side effects, adherence to drug use, and seizures in epilepsy patients. To create the mobile health system, it is necessary to explore information not only from the literature but also from experts and patients. Therefore, this study aimed to examine what features/elements are needed in the mobile health system application. This study used a qualitative methodology with focus group discussion (FGD). The discussion process was recorded and transcribed verbatim, and the data was analyzed using thematic analysis with a descriptive interpretation approach. In addition, content validity by experts was also carried out from features or domains found in the literature and during FGD. The results of the FGD showed that the features needed for application development include patient profiles, drug reminders, information about diseases and drugs, medication records, side effects/adverse events records, records of frequency and triggers of seizures, application appearance, and ease of use. Based on the validity content by experts, all domains and features obtained (Items Content Validation Index) I-CVI values > 0.79 and were acceptable. In conclusion, this data can be used to develop the design and features of mobile health system applications for epilepsy patients.