A Personalized Mobile Application Providing Temperature-Related Health Risk Warnings and Protective Recommendations for Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

This study is a proof-of-concept study using a cluster randomized controlled design, with hospitals serving as the unit of randomization. Four eligible hospitals in Beijing will be selected as study sites, and each hospital together with all eligible participants enrolled at that site will be treated as one cluster. Clusters will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to the intervention group or the control group. In addition to usual COPD care, participants in the intervention group will receive temperature-related health risk warning messages and corresponding protective recommendations generated from real-time meteorological data and individual characteristics through the personalized mobile application. Participants in the control group will receive usual COPD care only without access to the mobile application. The study includes a baseline assessment and a 12-month follow-up period. Study visits will occur at baseline and at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after enrollment. Baseline assessments will include demographic information, air-conditioner use, smoking and alcohol consumption, health status, acute exacerbation events, quality of life, functional capacity, symptoms, psychological status, environmental temperature perception, and physiological and biochemical indicators. Follow-up assessments will collect acute exacerbation events, quality of life, functional capacity, symptoms, psychological status, physiological and biochemical indicators, environmental temperature perception and participants' use of the mobile application. Due to the cluster design and the nature of the mobile application intervention, study participants and research staff who collect visit data will be unmasked. However, data analysts and members of the endpoint adjudication committee will remain masked to the randomization assignments.