Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) are a leading cause of death globally. The widespread availability of smartphones and wearables offers researchers potential solutions for NCD prevention and management. However, knowledge generated from NCDs and mHealth research often struggles to translate into practical use. Meaningful collaborations among researchers, knowledge users, and partners have been identified as highly effective in enhancing knowledge translation for addressing NCDs through mHealth. To tackle this challenge, our team has developed the first "no-code" mHealth app development research platform (Pathverse) enabling researchers to create custom NCD research apps without coding. This project aims to expand the platform to facilitate connections between researchers, knowledge users, and partners for collaborative NCD research. The study objectives are: 1) To engage with key stakeholders to determine research priorities, barriers and opportunities for designing a pan-Canadian Mobile Health Research and Knowledge Translation Platform aimed to prevent and manage non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) through behaviour changes. 2) To build research capacity for conducting future research on the pan-Canadian Mobile Health Research and Knowledge Translation Platform. This 1-year project follows a participatory research framework with five phases, including environmental scanning, virtual consultations, and summarizing and sharing study results. The multi-disciplinary expertise within the study team ensures feasibility and potential impact on Canada's scientific and community landscape. The project will enhance patient engagement, strengthen the pan-Canadian Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR), and build tools for applying innovative research methods to tackle NCDs.