Exploring the Discursive Emphasis on Patients and Coaches Who Participated in Technology-Assisted Diabetes Self-management Education: Clinical Implementation Study of Health360x

Background A critical unmet need for underserved patients with diabetes is regular access to sufficient support for diabetes self-management. Although advances in digital technologies have made way for eHealth applications that provide a scalable path for tailored interventions for self-management of chronic conditions, health and digital literacy has remained an obstacle to leveraging these technologies for effective diabetes self-management education. Studies have shown that the availability of coaches helps to maintain engagement in internet-based studies and improves self-efficacy for behavior change. However, little is known about the substances involved in these interactions. Objective This study aims to compare the content of conversations between patient–coach pairs that achieved their self-management goals and those that did not. The context is a clinical implementation study of diabetes self-management behavior change using Health360x within the practices of the Morehouse Choice Accountable Care Organization in the Atlanta metro area. Health360x is a coach-assisted consumer health information technology designed to support self-management skills acquisition and behavior among underserved, high-risk patients with diabetes. Methods We provide a novel analysis of the discursive emphasis on patients and coaches. We examined transcripts of visits using a structural topic model to estimate topic content and prevalence as a function of patient and coach characteristics. We compared topics between patient–coach pairs that achieved diabetes-related self-management goals and those who did not. We also estimated a regression in which utterances are the units, the dependent variable is the proportion of an utterance that is about a given topic, and the independent variables are speaker types and explored other themes. Results Transcripts from 50 patients who were recruited and consented, starting in February 2015, were analyzed. A total of 44 topics were estimated for patient–coach pairs that achieved their intended health goals and 50 topics for those who did not. Analysis of the structural topic model results indicated that coaches in patient–coach pairs that were able to achieve self-management goals provided more contextual feedback and probed into patients’ experience with technology and trust in consumer information technologies. We also found that discussions around problem areas and stress, support (βCoach=.015; P<.001), initial visits (βCoach=.02; P<.001), problems with technology (βCoach=.01; P<.001), health eating goals (βCoach=.01; P=.04), diabetes knowledge (βCoach=.02; P<.001), managing blood sugar (βCoach=.03; P<.001), and using Health360x (βCoach=.003; P=.03) were dominated by coaches. Conclusions Coach-facilitated, technology-based diabetes self-management education can help underserved patients with diabetes. Our use of topic modeling in this application sheds light on the actual dynamics in conversations between patients and coaches. Knowledge of the key elements for successful coach–patient interactions based on the analysis of transcripts could be applied to understanding everyday patient–provider encounters, given the recent paradigm shift around the use of telehealth.