83 3 Patient satisfaction with stoma care and their expectations on mobile apps for supportive care over the years, or recall bias may have disguised possible improvements. A third limitation might be the questioning of patients’ willingness to use an app. A description of its potential functionalities was not provided, although it could be assumed that the app would contain stoma-related information. Some patients will not have a concept of a mobile app, as it might be difficult to think in all potentials, while the remaining patients will have a different concept from each other. Therefore, the interpretation of these results requires caution because willingness is likely to be underestimated. Presenting a clear description of a well-designed app using visual images or videos will improve patients’ willingness to use an app. Finally, it can be argued that the variance of the satisfaction analyses was low, only determining the outcome to a small extent (see Tables 3, 4). However, the variance in patient satisfaction usually is less than 20%.25-27 CONCLUSION Patients are only moderately satisfied with their received stoma care, with shortcomings reported in the provision of preoperative information, stoma site selection, information on stoma-related problems, and material and postoperative care. For many patients, especially those with high proficiency in using smartphones, an app is considered an important addition to regular stoma care or support groups. Digital literacy should be a focus point of health and patient organisations, counselling patients appropriately about the benefits and helping them to use the apps. Further qualitative research on how to best support patients in building such an e-health solution is needed to provide additional in-depth insights that could be used as a blueprint for the development of an app and how to disseminate this well. Subsequently, it is highly recommended that the app will be evaluated on its safety and effectiveness in clinical research, and compensates for digital literacy as much as possible, involving patient groups who are not proficient in using apps in the app development.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw