Improving Diabetic Patient Health Through Assistive-Reading Technology

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) affects over 30 million Americans and requires patients to competently manage their conditions at home. However, the majority of diabetes self-management education (DSME) and aftercare print materials remain overly complicated, with excessively high reading difficulty and fall short in supporting functional readiness for self- management at home, especially for the 18% of U.S. adults unable to read beyond a second-grade level. This project will determine the feasibility of implementing assistive reading technology, designed for patients with limited print or English proficiency, that will immediately expand patient capacity to understand DSME materials, increase T2DM self- management adherence and eventually reduce, at a scale, disparate outcomes in a chronic disease. It will use a small pilot trial design of the GogyUp Reader app to use with print materials versus print materials with no app support and test effects of GogyUp on three-month follow-up measures of health literacy (primary outcome) using the Health Literacy Questionnaire subscales 9 (Understanding health information well enough to know what to do") and 2 ("Having sufficient information to manage my health"); and on three-month follow-up self-reported diabetes management (secondary outcome) using the Perceived Diabetes Self-Management Scale (PDSMS).