Developing Application Software for Detecting and Documenting Diabetic Foot Complications for Use by Nurses

Background With the increasing number of diabetes cases worldwide, developing application software that detects diabetic foot complications can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nursing care services, especially in Indonesia. Objective This study aimed to compare a software-assisted documentation method to a paper-based method in early diabetic foot complications detection according to documentation time and the accuracy of determining diabetic foot risk factors. Methods This study was comprised of two stages, namely application software development with expert test methods and application software testing using a quasi-experimental design. The sample was selected purposively, consisting of documentation data from 80 type-2 diabetes mellitus foot examinations. The data were divided into two groups, namely paper-based documentation data and software-assisted documentation data. The documentation time and accuracy of determining diabetic foot risk factors were analyzed by the Mann-Whitney test and Kappa test at a confidence interval of 95% using SPSS. Results There was a significant difference between the software-assisted documentation method and paper-based documentation method in the documentation time (p value < 0.001). The strength index of accuracy shows that the software-assisted documentation was stronger than the paper-based documentation in determining risk factors for diabetic foot complications (1.00 > 0.373). Conclusion The software-assisted documentation method was more time-effective in detecting diabetic feet complications and had greater accuracy than the paper-based documentation method.