Usability and acceptance of a digital screening tool for diabetes in four European countries: the DigiCare4You study

Andreas Triantafyllidis, Sofia Segkouli, Katerina Skoumpourdi, Christina Mavrogianni, Ditila Doracaj, Florian Toti, Natalya Usheva, Martin Mirchev, Natalia Legarre, Ivie Maneschy, Yannis Manios, Konstantinos Votis, Chiara Seghieri, Djordje Djokic, Konstantinos Makrilakis, Lieven Annemans, Ruben Willems, Rajesh Vedanthan, Sabine Dupont, Brian Oldenburg et al. (84 additional authors not shown)

Abstract: Digital screening programs and tools provide the potential for early detection of chronic diseases such as diabetes in the general population. The main purpose of the current paper is to present the findings of a multi-country study conducted with implementers (i.e., health professionals) and citizens (i.e., patients) to assess the usability and acceptance of a digital screening tool for type 2 diabetes screening. To this aim, 109 healthcare professionals and 71 citizens from four (4) European countries—Bulgaria, Albania, Spain, and Greece –participated in the study. The participants were requested to test the DigiCare4You tool, by completing instructed activities for user interaction, and were provided with questionnaires consisted of multiple sections that captured participants’ characteristics, perceptions, attitudes, and testing experience. The perceived usability assessed through the System Usability Scale (SUS) was found to be satisfactory for both health professionals (SUS score = 73.9) and citizens (SUS score = 68.06), and the majority of the participants considered the tool as useful and easy to learn. The results show the digital tool’s favorable usability among healthcare professionals and citizens in different regions, paving the way for its successful implementation and wider adoption in diabetes care.