DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR APP-BASED HEALTHCARE INTERVENTIONS: A MIXED METHOD APPROACH

Despite the ubiquity of mobile health applications (apps), the practical use and success of the apps have been questionable. Design Principles (DP) can affect chronic health app user satisfaction and have been studied for ensuring favorable app usage. However, there is no consensual definition of DP within the preceding literature, which has a technical rather than an end-user-centric focus and lacks a rigorous theoretical basis. Moreover, different levels of DPs’ application can lead to differential user satisfaction as influenced by the user-contextual environment, warranting a quantitative assessment. Accordingly, the overarching question to be addressed is which DP for the self-management of chronic conditions contributes to better user satisfaction outcomes. The research focuses on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) as a representative condition. This research uses a mixed methods, with a qualitative approach for DP identification and a quantitative approach for the studying the DP-Satisfaction relationship. The DP identification is achieved through - 1) An in depth review of foundational theory for greater validity, 2) A Systematic Literature Review (SLR), for DP themes grounded in theory, and 3) Manually coded user reviews for MS apps. The theoretical underpinnings of the empirical approach are established through a composite theoretical lens, based on technologically, behaviorally, and cognitively oriented frameworks. The DP extracted from theory, SLR, and manual coding methods are found to be largely consistent with each other, namely ‘Communication with Clinicians’, ‘Compatibility, ‘Education’, ‘Notifications’, ‘Tracking’, ‘Social Support’, ‘Ease of Use’, ‘Technical Support’, ‘Usefulness’, ‘Privacy and Security’, and Quality. An ordinal logistic regression analysis is conducted to understand the relationship between DP and User Satisfaction outcomes based on the manually coded DP scores of the user reviews. All DP have a significant impact on User Satisfaction. From a theoretical perspective, the research improves our understanding of key design principles for the self-management of chronic conditions such as MS and the impact of such principles on user satisfaction. From a practical perspective, the findings provide guidance to the user requirement elicitation process, potentially leading to the development of more successful, sustainable, and responsive healthcare interventions

The development of My Care Hub mobile-phone app to support self-management in Australians with type 1 or type 2 diabetes

Non-adherence to self-management poses a serious risk to diabetes complications. Digital behavioural change interventions have the potential to provide education and motivate users to regularly engage with self-management of diabetes. This paper describes the development of My Care Hub mobile phone application (app) aimed at supporting self-management in people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The development of My Care Hub involved a comprehensive process of healthy behavioural change identification, end users’ needs, expert consensus, data security and privacy considerations. The app translation was a highly iterative process accompanied by usability testing and design modification. The app development process included: (1) behaviour change strategy selection; (2) users’ 31 involvement; (3) expert advisory involvement; (4) data security and privacy considerations; (5) design creation and output translation into a smartphone app and (6) two usability testings of the app prototype version. The app features include self-care activities documentation, analytics, personalized and generalized messages for diabetes self-management as well as carbohydrate components of common foods in Australia. Twelve respondents provided feedback on the usability of the app. Initially, a simplification of the documentation features of the app was identified as a need to improve usability. Overall, results indicated good user satisfaction rate

Diabetes Management System for a New Type 2 Diabetes Geriatric Cohort: Improve the Interaction of Self-management

abstract: According to the ADA (American Diabetes Association), diabetes mellitus is one of the chronic diseases with the highest mortality rate. In the US, 25 million are known diabetics, which may double in the next decade, and another seven million are undiagnosed. Among these patients, older adults are a very special group with varying physical capabilities, cognitive functions and life expectancies. Because they run an increased risk for geriatric conditions, Type 2 diabetes treatments for them must be both realistic and systematic. In fact, some researchers have explored older adults’ experiences of diabetes, and how they manage their diabetes with new technological devices. However, little research has focused on their emotional experiences of medical treatment technology, such as mobile applications, tablets, and websites for geriatric diabetes. This study will address both elderly people's experiences and reactions to devices and their children's awareness of diabetes. It aims to find out how to improve the diabetes treatment and create a systematic diabetes mobile application that combines self-initiated and assisted care together.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Design 201

Mobile Health Technologies

Mobile Health Technologies, also known as mHealth technologies, have emerged, amongst healthcare providers, as the ultimate Technologies-of-Choice for the 21st century in delivering not only transformative change in healthcare delivery, but also critical health information to different communities of practice in integrated healthcare information systems. mHealth technologies nurture seamless platforms and pragmatic tools for managing pertinent health information across the continuum of different healthcare providers. mHealth technologies commonly utilize mobile medical devices, monitoring and wireless devices, and/or telemedicine in healthcare delivery and health research. Today, mHealth technologies provide opportunities to record and monitor conditions of patients with chronic diseases such as asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) and diabetes mellitus. The intent of this book is to enlighten readers about the theories and applications of mHealth technologies in the healthcare domain

Design and Evaluation of a Pervasive Coaching and Gamification Platform for Young Diabetes Patients

Self monitoring, personal goal-setting and coaching, education and social support are strategies to help patients with chronic conditions in their daily care. Various tools have been developed, e.g., mobile digital coaching systems connected with wearable sensors, serious games and patient web portals to personal health records, that aim to support patients with chronic conditions and their caregivers in realizing the ideal of self-management. We describe a platform that integrates these tools to support young patients in diabetes self-management through educational game playing, monitoring and motivational feedback. We describe the design of the platform referring to principles from healthcare, persuasive system design and serious game design. The virtual coach is a game guide that can also provide personalized feedback about the user’s daily care related activities which have value for making progress in the game world. User evaluations with patients under pediatric supervision revealed that the use of mobile technology in combination with web-based elements is feasible but some assumptions made about how users would connect to the platform were not satisfied in reality, resulting in less than optimal user experiences. We discuss challenges with suggestions for further development of integrated pervasive coaching and gamification platforms in medical practice

Micro ad-hoc Health Social Networks (uHSN). Design and evaluation of a social-based solution for patient support

Objective: To contribute the design, development, and assessment of a new concept: Micro ad hoc Health Social Networks (uHSN), to create a social-based solution for supporting patients with chronic disease. Design: After in-depth fieldwork and intensive co-design over a 4-year project following Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), this paper contributes a new paradigm of uHSN, defining two interaction areas (the “backstage” the sphere invisible to the final user, where processes that build services take place; and the “onstage” the visible part that includes the patients and relatives), and describes a new transversal concept, i.e., “network spaces segments, ” to provide timely interaction among all involved profiles and guaranteeing qualitative relationships. This proposal is applicable to any service design project and to all types of work areas; in the present work, it served as a social-based solution for supporting patients with chronic disease in two real-life health scenarios: a Parkinson disease patient association and a Stroke rehabilitation service in a hospital. These two scenarios included the following main features: thematic (related to the specific disease), private, and secure (only for the patient, relatives, healthcare professional, therapist, carer), with defined specific objectives (around patient support), small size (from tens to hundreds of users), ability to integrate innovative services (e.g., connection to hospital information service or to health sensors), supported by local therapeutic associations, and clustered with preconfigured relationships among users based in network groups. Measurements: Using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for 6 months, the performance of the uHSN was assessed in the two environments: a hospital rehabilitation unit working with Stroke patients, and a Parkinson disease association providing physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychological support, speech therapy, and social services. We describe the proposed methods for evaluating the uHSN quantitatively and qualitatively, and how the scientific community can replicate and/or integrate this contribution in its research. Results: The uHSN overcomes the main limitations of traditional HSNs in the main areas recommended in the literature: privacy, security, transparency, system ecology, Quality of Service (QoS), and technology enhancement. The qualitative and quantitative research demonstrated its viability and replicability in four key points: user acceptance, productivity improvement, QoS enhancement, and fostering of social relations. It also meets the expectation of connecting health and social worlds, supporting distance rehabilitation, improving professionals’ efficiency, expanding users’ social capital, improving information quality and immediacy, and enhancing perceived peer/social/emotional support. The scientific contributions of the present paper are the first step not only in customizing health solutions that empower patients, their families, and healthcare professionals, but also in transferring this new paradigm to other scientific, professional, and social environments to create new opportunities

Addendum to Informatics for Health 2017: Advancing both science and practice

This article presents presentation and poster abstracts that were mistakenly omitted from the original publication