Development, feasibility and acceptability of a self-efficacy-enhancing smartphone application among pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus: single- arm pilot clinical trial

BACKGROUND: There is growing attention to the use of mHealth technologies to promote glycemic control for women with GDM around the world, but research on promoting a change in health behaviors is lacking. This study aimed to document the process of designing, developing, and testing the feasibility and acceptability of the SEESPA. METHODS: This single-arm pilot clinical trial study included 15 pregnant women with GDM. Following SEESPA development (e.g., goal setting and action plan, role modeling, motivational messages, mastery of experiences, and tracking healthy behaviors), all participants were provided access to use the SEESPA for 4 weeks. Feasibility outcomes assessed were rates of recruitment, retention rate, success rate of transmitting motivational text messages, rate of participants acknowledging receipt of text messages, and success rate of recording healthy behaviors. Acceptability outcomes were determined by asking open-ended questions through telephone interview at 4-week post-intervention. RESULTS: Fifteen randomly selected women consented to participate in the study, with a 60.0% (n = 9) retention rate at post-trial intervention and 40.0% (n = 6) trial dropout. Two motivational text messages per week were sent to all participants. Of these, 68.1% were acknowledged by the participants. Study participants reported that SEESPA is useful, effective, and they felt satisfied about it. In addition, they brought few suggestions that will be integrated on the final version of the app. CONCLUSIONS: and Clinical Relevance. The developed innovative SEESPA is a feasible and acceptable intervention for behavioral modifications among women with GDM, and is ready to be tested in a larger RCT study which is expected to inform the health policymakers to integrate SEESPA with the antenatal health care practice of women with GDM, specifically in developing countries where there is a greater risk of developing GDM complications among mothers and their infants. Trial registration. The study is registered on September 16, 2019 (ACTRN12619001278123p) by the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-022-04684-1.