Understanding engagement with lifestyle information for women with polycystic ovary syndrome

PCOS is a common condition affecting ~13% of reproductive-aged women. Lifestyle management is a key initial first-line therapy for PCOS according to international evidence-based guidelines. Lifestyle intervention can be delivered in a range of ways including by medical and allied health professionals and online formats (e or m health). One evidence-based m-health tool is the AskPCOS application (AskPCOS) which was developed in response to a need for high-quality and evidence-based e-health tools for improving women’s experience of living with PCOS. While it has been successful in engaging women, creating long-term users who return for ongoing support is challenging, with reports that current, simplistic messaging and “one-size fits all” approaches are not useful or attractive. This messaging also does not recognise the multiple, different presentations of PCOS. The challenge moving forward will be to deliver targeted lifestyle messages in a more engaging manner. This study aims to make online evidence-based lifestyle advice more appealing, and therefore more effective for women with PCOS by creating a personalised treatment approach. This project will ultimately develop a set of tools for phenotyping women with PCOS to identify patient-specific lifestyle management strategies that can improve adherence and therefore quality of life and health outcomes. We will also undertake qualitative research to better understand how online evidence-based lifestyle information can be improved and adapted to make it more appealing to the user, helping us to identify specific features that are key to increasing engagement. The latter stages of this project will utilise the existing AskPCOS application to implement and test prototypes for further refinement and evaluation through co-design.