Performance of health status measures with a pen based personal digital assistant

• Published in: Annals of the rheumatic diseases Vol. 64; no. 10; pp. 1480 - 1484
• Main Authors: Kvien, T K, Mowinckel, P, Heiberg, T, Dammann, K L, Dale, Ø, Aanerud, G J, Alme, T N, Uhlig, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and European League Against Rheumatism 01.10.2005; BMJ; BMJ Publishing Group LTD
• Subjects: Aged; Agreements; Arthritis, Rheumatoid - therapy; Attitude to Computers; Biological and medical sciences; Clinical medicine; Computers, Handheld; Confidence intervals; Data collection; Diseases of the osteoarticular system; electronic data collection; Extended Report; Feasibility Studies; Female; handheld computer; health status; Health Status Indicators; Humans; ICC; Inflammatory joint diseases; intraclass correlation coefficient; Male; Medical Records Systems, Computerized; Medical sciences; MHAQ; Middle Aged; modified health assessment questionnaire; OMERACT; Ophthalmology; outcome measures in arthritis clinical trials; Pain Measurement; Patients; PDA; personal digital assistant; Questionnaires; RADAI; Reproducibility of Results; Rheumatic diseases; Rheumatoid arthritis; rheumatoid arthritis disease activity index; Rheumatology; SDD; Self Disclosure; SF-36; short form 36 item health assessment questionnaire; smallest detectable difference; Surveys and Questionnaires; Treatment Outcome; Variance analysis; VAS; Vision disorders; visual analogue scale; Performance evaluation; Eye disease; Chronic; Pain; Health status; Vision disorder; Rheumatoid arthritis; Diseases of the osteoarticular system; Visual fatigue; Rheumatology; Autoimmune disease; Inflammatory joint disease
• ISSN: 0003-4967; 1468-2060
• DOI: 10.1136/ard.2004.030437

Background: Increasing use of self reported health status in clinical practice and research, as well as patient appreciation of monitoring fluctuations of health over time, suggest a need for more frequent collection of data. Electronic use of health status measures in the follow up of patients is a possible way to achieve this. Objective: To compare self reported health status measures in a personal digital assistant (PDA) version and a paper/pencil version for test–retest reliability, agreement between scores, and feasibility. Methods: 30 patients with stable rheumatoid arthritis (mean age 61.6 years, range 49.8 to 70.0; mean disease duration, 16.7 years; 63% female; 67% rheumatoid factor positive; 46.6% on disease modifying antirheumatic drugs) completed self reported health status measures (pain, fatigue, and global health on visual analogue scales (VAS), rheumatoid arthritis disease activity index, modified health assessment questionnaire, SF-36) in a conventional paper based questionnaire version and on a PDA (HP iPAQ, model h5450). Completion was repeated after five to seven days. Results: Test–retest reliability was similar, as evaluated by the Bland–Altman approach, the coefficient of variation, and intraclass correlation coefficients. The scores showed acceptable agreement, but with a slight tendency to higher scores on VAS with the PDA than the paper/pencil version. No significant differences were seen for measures of feasibility (time to complete, satisfaction score), but 65.5% preferred PDA, 20.7% preferred paper, and 13.8% had no preference. Conclusions: The clinimetric performance of paper/pencil versions of self reported health status measures was similar to an electronic version, using an inexpensive PDA.