Accessibility of evidence-based behavioral health interventions is one of the main challenges in health care, and effective treatment approaches are not always available for patients that would benefit from them. The past decades, digitization has dramatically changed the health care landscape. Although mHealth has shown promise in addressing issues of accessibility and reach, there is yet a large room for improvements. The integration of technical innovations and theory driven development is a key concern. Digital solutions developed by industrial digital health developers often lack a clear theoretical framework, and the solutions are not properly evaluated to meet the standards of scientifically proven efficacy. On the other hand, mHealth interventions developed in academia may be theory driven but lack user friendliness, and are commonly technically outdated by the time they are implemented in regular care, if they ever are. In an ongoing project aimed at scientific innovation, the mHealth Agile Development and Evaluation Lifecycle was used to combine strengths from both industry and academia in the development of ACTsmart – a smartphone-based Acceptance and Commitment Therapy treatment for adult chronic pain patients. The present study concerns the development and feasibility (acceptability, usage and practicality) of ACTsmart (phase 0-2 of the mHealth Agile Development and Evaluation Lifecycle). In short, the results from phase 0-2 show that ACTsmart is feasible, acceptable, and practical, warranting implementation studies to evaluate the effectiveness of ACTsmart (phase 3). Also, the agile development process is reported, in which the team continuously improved the technical solution and the intervention content through a series of user tests with patients and mHealth providers (therapists), until satisfying levels of acceptance and practicality were reached.

SMARTPHONE DELIVERED ACT FOR ADULTS WITH LONGSTANDING PAIN - A PILOT STUDY OF FEASIBILITY AND PRELIMINARY EFFECTS