Evaluation of a Health Platform among participants with chronic disease

This study gives an overview of the effectiveness of the web-based intervention MijnGezondheidsPlatform (MGP) among participants with chronic disease such as diabetes mellitus, cardio vascular risk, asthma or COPD. In view of the increasing percentage of individuals suffering of chronic diseases and the potential role that eHealth related tools such as web-based intervention can play in stimulation empowerment and physical activity, the goal of this study was to examine the improvement of physical activity and self-management skills among participants using MGP in comparison to control group and whether personality is a factor that influences and activates physical activity. Combining the components technology and health define the construct known as eHealth. eHealth is a promising field that provides information and uses communicating technologies in order to improve health. Persuasive features (PSD model) used in eHealth related tools seem to be an important factor that contributes to the effectiveness and success of a web-based intervention. The current study was conducted in total with 110 participants who suffered from chronic disease during research duration. The experimental group consisted of 25 participants suffering from chronic disease, making use of a web-based intervention called “MijnGezondheidPlatform” for one year. The control group comprised 85 participants suffering from chronic disease not making use of MGP. All participants had to fill out various questionnaires, among them about physical activity (IPAQ-SF), self-management skills (PAM-13) and personality (TIPI) on five different measure moments. Only the first (baseline; T0) and last (post-test; T5) measures were taken into account for analysis. Covariation analysis revealed that there is a nonsignificant difference between participants with chronic diseases using the web-based intervention MGP for one year and control group. Results show despite expectations that the personality traits Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism are not statistically significant related to physical activity. The current study found using a Spearman correlation analysis that the personality trait Neuroticism and physical activity are statistically nonsignificantly related but the relation has a trend into the negative. This implies that the webbased intervention MGP does not enhance level of physical activity and that only Neuroticism has a trend to be negatively related with physical activity. In particular, this means that the more Neuroticism, the more emotional unstable it is, the level of physical activity will be lower. Further research should aim at understanding the effectiveness of different persuasive features used in eHealth related tools.