Advanced Kidney Disease Patient Portal:Implementation and Evaluation with Haemodialysis Patients

Patients on haemodialysis face complex care pathways, a high treatment burden and lower quality-of-life. Working with multidisciplinary domain experts, we have conducted several iterative development cycles to design, develop and evaluate a portal for patients on haemodialysis that can help them better understand and navigate their care pathways. A key functionality of the portal is to improve data and information sharing with clinicians, including on key aspects of quality-of-life through Patients Reported Outcome Measures. A case study was conducted with multidisciplinary experts and patients in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board (Scotland), using interviews combined with the System Usability Scale (n=26). Patients' feedback and system use observations were used to further refine the system design requirements and functionalities. Key lessons include: a wide preference for tablet-based input vs paper, identification of case-specific accessibility issues and situational impairment, benefits of self-completed digital data collection in overcoming such issues and promoting patient independence and privacy, with considerations for maintaining perceived value and engagement with such systems and when to offer alternatives

Mobile support for adults with mild learning disabilities during clinical consultations

Some of the factors that explain poor health outcomes for people with learning disabilities (LDs) include multi-morbidity and underdiagnosed health conditions. Previous studies have suggested that this population face significant communication barriers when interacting with health professionals and this is a major contributing factor to such diagnosis complications. Consequently, such health barriers are often preventable. However, there is a surprising lack of research-based technologies available that intend to promote this communication. We aim to address this gap by investigating the potential of using mobile technologies to support adults with mild LDs during clinical consultations. To achieve this, we interviewed a number of domain experts including government advisors, academics, support workers and General Practitioners. We then developed a technology probe to inform the information extracted and subsequently created a set of design guidelines for the development of Augmentative and Communicative technologies that target the clinical needs of adults with mild LDs

Design requirements for a digital aid to support adults with mild learning disabilities during clinical consultations: a qualitative study with experts

Background: Adults with mild learning disabilities (MLDs) face a plethora of obstacles when accessing effective health care. Central to many of these barriers is communication, with medical practitioners often remaining untrained on how to interact with patients who have learning disabilities (LDs). To date, research on how to promote this communication has largely centered on the development of low-tech aids. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of utilizing tablet technologies to promote communication between general practitioners and patients with MLDs. We achieved this by identifying a set of design requirements from experts in LDs. Methods: A set of design guidelines was formed during a 2-phase process. Phase 1 involved conducting a series of requirements-gathering interviews with 10 experts in LDs-the protocol of which emerged from the results of a separate scoping review. The interviews were subjected to a framework analysis to discern the key requirements discussed by the experts, and these were embedded within a technology probe. In phase 2, this probe was presented to a subset (n=4) of the experts during a round of usability studies, and the feedback received was used to update the requirements identified in phase 1. Results: An initial set of design requirements has been produced that may assist in the development of clinical Alternative and Augmentative Communication technologies for adults with MLDs. Factors that must be considered range from the health, physical and cognitive needs of stakeholders, to the more individual needs of users. Conclusions: The experts involved in the study were optimistic about the proposed app. They believe that such technologies can help to alleviate time constraints and promote communication by presenting information in a form understood by both practitioners and patients

Ontology-driven adaptive medical information collection system

Computer-based surveys and questionnaires have become ubiquitous. Yet in many cases, Information Collection Systems (ICS) offer limited support in terms of tailoring structure and content of surveys in response to user interaction. Previous techniques for content adaptation such as conditional branching do not scale well and are also hard to maintain as structural dependencies in a survey often need to be hard-coded in the system. We here propose a generic model for contextsensitive self adaptation of ICS, based on a questionnaire ontology. We illustrate the model with a description of our own medical ICS implementation and discuss the potential benefits of such system, especially in the context of tailored healthcare