Application of Patient-Generated Health Data in Managing Chronic Conditions in Hospital Kuala Lumpur: A Qualitative Study

BACKGROUND: Patient-generated health data (PGHD) is health-related data captured and recorded by patients which informs healthcare practitioners (HCP) about the patients’ health status between clinic visits. PGHD could be attributed as part of digital health and technological advancement. METHODS: This is an exploratory qualitative study to explore the current PGHD usage and the views and experience of HCP towards PGHD. Semi-structured in-depth online interviews based on the modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) were conducted with seven Hospital Kuala Lumpur medical- and surgical-based HCP specialists between October 2019 and February 2020. Purposive sampling method was applied to ensure speciality diversity among study respondents. Thematic analysis was performed on the interview transcripts. RESULTS: Four main themes were identified namely the PGHD usage among the study respondents, the benefits of PGHD, the challenges of PGHD usage and the effort needed to use the PGHD. The main finding of this study includes the exploration of the benefits of PGHD usage such as efficient data management in aiding clinical consultation. Nonetheless, the clinical decision making based on PGHD is limited due to poor adoption of PGHD and unavailability of electronic data. This could be due to the lack of awareness, ICT infrastructure, funding, poor health literacy and language and cultural problems. CONCLUSION: PGHD has huge potential to be adopted in the clinical setting and subsequently benefiting the patients. However, parallel supportive environment is essential in supporting the usage of PGHD in the clinical setting.