Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory

HealthTrack (https://apps.apple.com/it/app/healthtrack/id6759251910) is a mobile application designed by Professor De Maria for the systematic monitoring of self-care behaviors in individuals living with one or more chronic conditions. It is grounded in the Middle-Range Theory of Self-Care of Chronic Illness and enables a multidimensional assessment of the three core components of self-care: self-care maintenance, self-care monitoring, and self-care management. This assessment is conducted using the Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory (SC-CII), a validated and reliable instrument for measuring self-care in populations with chronic conditions.

HealthTrack incorporates the SC-CII in 17 languages and leverages advanced large language models (LLMs) to deliver personalized and clinically meaningful feedback. Upon completion of the SC_CII, the app provides standardized scores for each self-care component, facilitating interpretation in both clinical and research settings. Additionally, it automatically generates a tailored text message with a dual function: reinforcing adequate self-care behaviors and offering targeted educational guidance to improve areas with lower performance, thereby supporting learning processes and self-regulation.

HealthTrack has been developed for use by both healthcare professionals and patients. Clinicians can employ the app to longitudinally monitor patients’ self-care behaviors, supporting data-driven clinical decision-making based on standardized and trackable measures over time. At the same time, patients can use HealthTrack as a self-monitoring tool, enhancing awareness and promoting active engagement in the management of their condition.

By enabling the storage of data from each interaction, HealthTrack allows for the comparison of scores over time and the analysis of self-care trajectories. This functionality facilitates the identification of behavioral changes and supports timely and personalized interventions. The app is freely available and has demonstrated high usability, making it accessible and easy to implement across diverse clinical settings and populations.

Overall, HealthTrack represents an innovative tool that integrates psychometric rigor, advanced technology, usability, and clinical applicability, with potentially significant implications for the management of chronic conditions.