Development of urinary diary mobile application and evaluation in patients with urinary incontinence

Abstract

Objective: To develop a feasible smartphone urinary diary application (UDA), and evaluate reliability and patient acceptability as a collection, calculation, and sharing tool. Materials and Methods: We developed the UDA for smartphones, which collects voiding, leakage, fluid intake, and grade of urgency data. A two-way cross-sectional study was conducted with 60 participants, participants split into two groups. Thirty participants completed UDA for 3 days either preceded or followed by a standard paper diary. We assessed the paper app reliability of the UDA with the Kappa variable and internal correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: 29 (96.6%) participants completed the 3-day UDA in the first phase, 92.6% in the second phase, in comparison to 90% and 79.4% in paper form, respectively. Incomplete variable recording was observed at 10.3%–20% in the UDA group in comparison to 33.3%–34.8 % in the PF group. Of the 48 participants who experienced both diaries, 40 (83.3%) preferred the UDA. Paper app correlation was good to very good with ICC ranging from 0.60 to 0.90 for all variables (p < 0.001). Kappa values for incontinence, stress incontinence, urge incontinence, and increased frequency were 0.95, 0.94, 0.82 0.87, and 0.54; respectively (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The performance of developed smartphone UDA is comparable with and highly correlated with paper form with most users finding the app feasible. Convergent validity with urinary incontinence and other lower urinary tract dysfunctions is required.