Determination of the Required Educational Content in the Development of Educational Mobile Application for Patients with Epilepsy: Perspectives of Patients and Physicians

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disease. In epilepsy treatment process, both of appropriate treatment options and patient education should be considered. Nowadays, mobile technologies have been known as a proper platform for improvement of patients’ knowledge in chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to assess the perspectives of epileptic patients and physicians about the required educational content in developing an educational mobile application for epilepsy.
In this cross-sectional study, the perspectives of 100 patients with epilepsy who were members of the Iranian Epilepsy Association and 15 physicians who were members or colleagues of this association were surveyed about the patients’ educational needs. The applied questionnaire included 19 questions in three areas (disease information, lifestyle and used medications). Data were analyzed by the use of descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation).
A variety of items such as first aid, cause, symptoms, complications and treatment of epilepsy, the effect of exercise, sleep, driving, occupation, marriage, pregnancy, nutrition in epilepsy, information about antiepileptic drugs and their complications, and the importance of the regular use of medications should be considered in the educational content of the application.
This study indicates that the educational content for developing a mobile application for patients with epilepsy from the perspectives of patients and physicians includes three domains of life style, disease information and medication. Totally, 15 educational requirements were identified that should be considered in developing the application.