A Pilot Evaluation of the Insomnia Coach Mobile App

This pilot study is designed to test the feasibility, acceptability, and potential effectiveness of a mobile phone application (app) developed by the VA National Center for PTSD (VA NCPTSD) for use by Veterans with insomnia. The primary objective is to assess whether Veterans find the Insomnia Coach app to be satisfactory and feasible to use. Secondary objectives are to determine if use of the app improves subjective sleep quality and sleep parameters (e.g., sleep latency, wake after sleep onset, and total sleep time), as well as other important outcomes (e.g., daily functioning).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Insomnia; Trauma, Psychological
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Insomnia Coach

Detailed Description

There are high rates of insomnia among Veterans, particularly those who have been exposed to potentially traumatic situations (i.e., combat exposure) and few receive cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), a first-line treatment for insomnia. Insomnia Coach is a mobile app for individuals with insomnia symptoms. This app provides:

• education about sleep, the development of insomnia, and evidence based behavioral and cognitive strategies
• self-assessment tools measuring insomnia severity and sleep need
• self-monitoring with a daily sleep diary
• self-management tools for relaxation and changing thinking about sleep
• individualized recommendations for a preferable sleep window (i.e., bed and rise times)
• daily reminders for behavioral changes In this pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT), 50 Veterans with significant insomnia symptoms will be recruited using flyers and social media (i.e., Facebook ads) and randomized in equal numbers to receive one of two conditions: 1) the Insomnia Coach mobile app (which is based on cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)) and, 2) a waitlist control.

Objective use of the Insomnia Coach mobile app will be tracked to assess feasibility (i.e., will participants use the app as intended). Participants will complete measures (using Qualtrics) of sleep, insomnia severity, depression and anxiety, and functional well-being at baseline, 6 weeks (posttreatment), and 12 weeks (follow-up). At post-treatment, participants in the Insomnia Coach app condition will also be asked to report their level of satisfaction with the app and to complete a brief qualitative evaluation of their experience using the app. Waitlist control condition participants will be informed about the Insomnia Coach app and provided with information on how to download it after completion of the follow-up assessment (i.e., at 12 weeks).

The aim of this research is to learn whether individuals, particularly Veterans, with insomnia, find Insomnia Coach to be satisfactory and feasible to use. It also aims to assess if use of the app potentially improves subjective sleep quality and sleep parameters (e.g., sleep latency, wake after sleep onset, and total sleep time), as well as other important outcomes (e.g., daily functioning). If this research demonstrates that Insomnia Coach is a promising tool for individuals experiencing sleep difficulties, it has the potential to address a need using a very cost-effective, widely accessible, scalable solution that would warrant more rigorous evaluation (e.g., a full-scale RCT).

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 50
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Palo Alto, California, United States, 94025
      • VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 55 years (Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age 18 to 55
• Owner of smartphone or tablet with Android or iOS operating system
• Probable insomnia (i.e., ISI >=10, 3 months or more with sxs, occurring >= 3 days/week, 30 minutes or > with sleep loss)
• Able to read/write English
• Internet connection and active email address

Exclusion Criteria:

• Comorbid sleep disorders (apnea, RLS, narcolepsy)*
• Started or changed dosage of sleep medications or SSRIs in past 2 months
• Unstable housing
• Medical condition identifiably causing sleep problems
• Significant alcohol/drug use issues
• Current mania or psychosis
• Currently severely depressed (PHQ-9 >20)
• Currently receiving or having recently received insomnia therapy resembling CBT-I
• Shift working
• Pregnant
• Newborn (3 mos. or younger) living in residence
• < 5 hours of average total sleep time on 7 days of sleep diaries

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Waitlist Control; Assessment only condition for all 12 weeks of participation.
Experimental: Insomnia Coach; Intervention condition that involves use of the Insomnia Coach app for 6 weeks.	Behavioral: Insomnia Coach; Insomnia Coach is a mobile application that provides psychoeducation and self-management tools for insomnia symptoms based on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Objective App Usage Data	Composite of app usage data comprised of button taps, sections visited, self-entered data, number of visits and days used, and time spent on the app per visit. Various combinations and aggregations of these behaviors will be explored as best indicators to optimally summarize app use.	6 weeks
Mobile Apps Rating Scale (MARS; Stoyanov et al., 2015)	A 20-item multidimensional, objective measure of app usability. It includes four subscales that measure an app's engagement, functionality, aesthetics, and information quality. All items are rated on a 5-point scale from "1. Inadequate" to "5. Excellent". The scores are tallied up and a mean score out of 5 is given to each of the categories scored.	6 weeks
System Usability Scale (SUS; Brooke, 1986)	A 10-item questionnaire of usability of products and services, including hardware, software, mobile devices, websites and applications. Items are on a 5-point scale numbered 1 to 5. Half of the items are worded negatively and half are worded positively. SUS yields a single number representing a composite measure of the overall usability of the system. To calculate the SUS score, the score contributions from each item are summed. Each item's score contribution will range from 0 to 4. For items 1,3,5,7,and 9 the score contribution is the scale position minus 1. For items 2,4,6,8 and 10, the contribution is 5 minus the scale position. Then the sum of the scores is multiplied by 2.5 to obtain the overall value of SU. SUS scores have a range of 0 to 100.	6 weeks
Qualitative Interview (Kuhn & Miller, 2018)	A 24-question, semi-structured interview to assess users' perceptions of Insomnia Coach.	6 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Insomnia Severity Index (ISI; Bastien et al., 2011)	A 7-item self-report questionnaire assessing the nature, severity, and impact of insomnia symptoms in the past month. Items are on a scale from 0 to 4. The seven answers are added up to get a total score, with higher scores reflecting greater insomnia severity	6 and 12 weeks
Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; Buysse et al., 1989)	A 19-item self-report measure assessing qualities and problems associated with sleep in the past month. It generates seven component scores: subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleep medication, and daytime dysfunction. A global sleep quality score is obtained by summing the seven component scores. Higher scores reflect poorer sleep quality. The global score ranges from 0 to 21, with a cut-off score of 5 as distinguishing "good" sleepers from "poor" sleepers.	6 and 12 weeks
PROMIS-Sleep-Related Impairment (PROMIS-SRI; Buysse et al., 2010)	This 16-item self-report form assesses sleep-related impairment over the past seven days. Each question has five response options ranging in value from 1 to 5. To find the total raw score the values of the response to each question are summed. The raw scores are converted to a standardized T-score using conversion tables published on the PROMIS website (nihpromis.org), with higher scores indicating greater sleep/wake disturbances.	6 and 12 weeks
Consensus Sleep Diary: Change in sleep onset latency (Carney et al., 2012)	The Consensus Sleep Diary will be used to prospectively monitor self-reported sleep. Shorter sleep onset indicates faster time to fall asleep.	6 and 12 weeks
Consensus Sleep Diary: Change in wake after sleep onset (Carney et al., 2012)	The Consensus Sleep Diary will be used to prospectively monitor self-reported sleep. Less time spent awake during the sleep period indicates better sleep.	6 and 12 weeks
Consensus Sleep Diary: Change in sleep efficiency (Carney et al., 2012)	The Consensus Sleep Diary will be used to prospectively monitor self-reported sleep. Higher sleep efficiency (total sleep time/time spent in bed) indicates better sleep quality.	6 and 12 weeks
Generalized Anxiety Disorder - 7 Item (GAD-7; Spitzer et al., 2006)	This 7-item measure assesses anxiety symptom severity. Items are scored from zero to three. The whole scale score can range from 0 to 21 and cut-off scores for mild, moderate and severe anxiety symptoms are 5, 10 and 15 respectively.	6 and 12 weeks
Patient Health Questionnaire 8 (PHQ-8; Kroenke et al., 2009)	An 8-item self-report instrument used to assess depression severity. Since the scale is self-administered in our studies and further probing about positive responses is not feasible, the question about suicide from the PHQ-9 was removed. Items are scored 0 to 3, with the total score being the sum of the 8 items. Higher scores indicate greater depression severity, with a score of 10 or greater considered major depression, and scores of 20 or more is severe major depression.	6 and 12 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 1, 2019
• Primary Completion (Actual): July 1, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): July 1, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: January 4, 2019
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 30, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): February 1, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 15, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 14, 2021
• Last Verified: October 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Veteran; mobile app; cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Nervous System Diseases; Sleep Disorders, Intrinsic; Dyssomnias; Sleep Wake Disorders; Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders; Stress Disorders, Traumatic; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders; Psychological Trauma
• Other Study ID Numbers: IRB-47188

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No