An Investigation into the Role of Mobile Technology in Collaborative Disease Management for Persons Living with Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes and other chronic non-communicable diseases represent a leading threat to health care and human development. The authors discusses how mobile technology can achieve collaborative disease management (CDM) within a population living with Type 2 diabetes. We introduces a framework for CDM using mobile technologies. While it can be applied to the management of any disease, we describe a specific instance for diabetes peer-support. In this paper, we validate the framework through the development and testing of a Mobile Health initiative called Mobile Diabetes Self-Management Support (DSMS). It allows persons living with diabetes to learn from each others’ experiences through a virtual support group. The paper presents two user studies conducted. The first study captured the participants’ initial perceptions of the application in a controlled environment and the second study investigated system usage and collaboration when the application was used in their personal settings.