Development and Evaluation of a Self-management Mobile App for Patients Undergoing Total Knee Arthroplasty

Purpose: The primary objective of this study is to develop a mobile application to support the self-management TKA patients and to evaluate the educational effectiveness of the developed mobile App.Methods: A mobile application for self-management in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA) was developed based on the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). To evaluate the effectiveness of the developed app, a quasi-experimental study using a non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design was conducted. A total of 63 patients who underwent TKA at a hospital in Seoul were assigned to either the experimental group (n = 32) or the control group (n = 31). The experimental group performed app-based self-management intervention for six weeks, while the control group received routine education. Data were collected before and after the intervention. The study analyzed the intervention’s effects on joint exercise knowledge, exercise self-efficacy, exercise performance, knee function score, and knee flexion angle.Results: Following six weeks of self-management using the mobile App, the experimental group showed significant improvements in exercise self-efficacy (<i>p</i>=.031) and exercise performance (<i>p</i>=.001) compared to the control group. However, there were no statistically significant differences in joint exercise knowledge (<i>p</i>=.094), Lysholm score (<i>p</i>=.106), or knee flexion angle (<i>p</i>=.887).Conclusion: The mobile App developed in this study was found to be an effective educational tool for improving exercise self-efficacy and exercise performance among patients after TKA. The findings confirmed that education through the self-management mobile app for TKA patients developed in this study can be an effective educational medium that positively affects exercise self-efficacy and exercise performance. Further research is needed to evaluate long-term effects and applicability in diverse patient populations, including improvements in app functionality.