An mHealth-based Healthcare Professional-Lay Health Worker Partnership Program (mHLPP)

Three separated semi-structured group interviews with healthcare professionals, lay health workers, and older adults will be conducted to explore their views on facilitating, hindering factors, and the acceptability of implementing the program in the community at six months.

Incidence of report of adverse events that is encountered by the older adults, lay health workers, and healthcare professionals will be measured to assess the safety of the program.

A performance checklist that developed by the research team according to the workflow of the program will be used to identify whether the program is implemented as intended. The principal investigator of the research team will pay random quality assurance visits to evaluate whether the provided interventions are adhered to the planned content, duration, and frequency of the contact sessions.

The number of older adults and lay health workers who are eligible, invited, excluded, and enrolled to participate in the program will be counted and compared to non-participants on key demographic data such as age, sociodemographic background, and living area.

The project manager of the study will be asked about the feasibility of the recruitment procedures, and the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria.

The research assistants will provide feedback on the length, clarity and acceptability of focus group interview questions and quantitative questionnaires, and ease of collecting data. The principal investigator of the research team will and review the results from the focus groups interviews for indications of important issues relating to data collection or analysis.

Blood pressure measurement will be performed after 10 minutes of sitting rest. A standard electronic sphygmomanometer will be used to measure supine blood pressure on the right arm of each candidate (unless contraindicated). The results on blood pressure will be divided into systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

HbA1c is a standard assessment of glycemia and refers to the mean blood glucose levels over the previous 2 to 3 months.

Fasting lipid profile includes cholesterol level, and high- and low-density lipoprotein. Both HbA1c and the fasting lipid profile will be drawn from participants' blood from their fingers at the third and sixth month when nurses have the home visits.

BMI results from dividing a subject's weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.

Quality of life will be measured by the version 2 of the 12-item Short Form Health Survey.

Perceived social support will be evaluated using the 32-item Chinese version of the Perceived Social Support Scale for Older Adults.

Self-care ability will be measured by the Chinese version of the Self-care Ability Scale for the Elderly (SASE).

Client empowerment will be evaluated by the Chinese version of the Client Empowerment Scale (CCES).

The outcomes of health services utilization include the total number of unscheduled visits to general out-patient departments, general practitioners (GP), emergency departments, and hospitals, and the total health service attendance. The information will be relied on the appointment letter and the report from the subjects.