User-centered design of the C3-cloud platform for elderly with multiple diseases - functional requirements and application testing

The number of patients with multimorbidity has been steadily increasing in the modern aging societies. The European C3-Cloud project provides a multidisciplinary and patient-centered “Collaborative Care and Cure-system” for the management of elderly with multimorbidity, enabling continuous coordination of care activities between multidisciplinary care teams (MDTs), patients and informal caregivers (ICG). In this study various components of the infrastructure were tested to fulfill the functional requirements and the entire system was subjected to an early application testing involving different groups of end-users. MDTs from participating European regions were involved in requirement elicitation and test formulation, resulting in 57 questions, distributed via an internet platform to 48 test participants (22 MDTs, 26 patients) from three pilot sites. The results indicate a high level of satisfaction with all components. Early testing also provided feedback for technical improvement of the entire system, and the paper points out useful evaluation methods

A collaborative platform for management of chronic diseases via guideline-driven individualized care plans

Older age is associated with an increased accumulation of multiple chronic conditions. The clinical management of patients suffering from multiple chronic conditions is very complex, disconnected and time-consuming with the traditional care settings. Integrated care is a means to address the growing demand for improved patient experience and health outcomes of multimorbid and long-term care patients. Care planning is a prevalent approach of integrated care, where the aim is to deliver more personalized and targeted care creating shared care plans by clearly articulating the role of each provider and patient in the care process. In this paper, we present a method and corresponding implementation of a semi-automatic care plan management tool, integrated with clinical decision support services which can seamlessly access and assess the electronic health records (EHRs) of the patient in comparison with evidence based clinical guidelines to suggest personalized recommendations for goals and interventions to be added to the individualized care plans. We also report the results of usability studies carried out in four pilot sites by patients and clinicians

C3-Cloud personalised care plan development platform for addressing the needs of multi-morbidity and managing poly-pharmacy : protocol for a pilot technology trial

Background: There is an increasing need to organise the care around the patient and not the disease, as well as taking into account the complex realities of multiple physical, psycho-social conditions and polypharmacy. Integrated patient-centred care delivery platforms have been developed for both patients and clinicians. These platforms could provide a promising way to achieve a collaborative environment that improves the provision of integrated care for patients via enhanced ICT solutions. Objective: The C3-Cloud project has developed two collaborative computer platforms for patients and members of the Multi-Disciplinary Team and deployed these in three different European settings. The objective of this study is to pilot test the platforms and evaluate their impact on patients, informal caregivers, healthcare professionals and, in extend, healthcare systems. Methods: This paper describes the protocol for conducting an evaluation of the user-centred design, user experience, acceptability, and usefulness of the platforms. For this, four ‘testing and evaluation’ phases have been defined, involving multiple qualitative methods, and advanced impact modelling. Results: The technology trial in this 4-year funded project (2016-2020) is currently in its execution phase. The testing and evaluation phase 1 and 2 have been completed with satisfying results on system component tests, and promising results on application and usability tests. The pilot technology trial for evaluation phase 3 and 4 was launched in August 2019. Data collection for these phases is underway and results are forthcoming, approximately in April 2020. We believe that the phased, iterative approach taken is useful as it involves relevant stakeholders at crucial stages in the platform development and allows for a sound user acceptance assessment of the final product. Conclusions: Patients with multiple chronic conditions often experience shortcomings in the care they receive. It is hoped that personalised care plan platforms for patients and collaboration platforms for members of Multi-Disciplinary Teams can help to tackle the specific challenges of clinical guideline reconciliation for multimorbid patients and improved the management of poly-pharmacy. The initial evaluative phases have indicated promising results of platform usability. The phased methodology has shown useful results in the first two phases, while results of phase 3 and 4 are pending. Clinical Trial: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0383420

Implementation of the user-centered design methodology to develop a sports application

Treball final de Grau en Disseny i Desenvolupament de Videojocs. Codi: VJ1241. Curs acadèmic: 2021/2022This document summarizes the entire development process of my Final Degree Work for the degree in Video Game Design and Development at Jaume I University. The main objective of this work is to develop an application that promotes physical activity by gamifying it. Using user-centered design and the Learning Mechanics - Game Mechanics (LM-GM) framework. As the project develops, it will be ow consistent this design framework is with the user-centered design (UCD) and if it is possible to create applications that satisfy the proposals for gamification of activities, which at first can be tedious. The project that has been chosen for this task has been an application to move from one point to another, whether walking, running or cycling, aimed at a wide audience that wants to start in the world of sports. Due to its mobility, it has been chosen to use Android Studio to develop a mobile application, at the end of this writing it will be possible to see how the application has evolved by submitting it to UCD and its changes are compared with the initial proposal made

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Crowd-sensing our Smart Cities: a Platform for Noise Monitoring and Acoustic Urban Planning

Environmental pollution and the corresponding control measurements put in place to tackle it play a significant role in determining the actual quality of life in modern cities. Amongst the several pollutant that have to be faced on a daily basis, urban noise represent one of the most widely known for its already ascertained health-related issues. However, no systematic noise management and control activities are performed in the majority of European cities due to a series of limiting factors (e.g., expensive monitoring equipment, few available technician, scarce awareness of the problem in city managers). The recent advances in the Smart City model, which is being progressively adopted in many cities, nowadays offer multiple possibilities to improve the effectiveness in this area. The Mobile Crowd Sensing paradigm allows collecting data streams from smartphone built-in sensors on large geographical scales at no cost and without involving expert data captors, provided that an adequate IT infrastructure has been implemented to manage properly the gathered measurements. In this paper, we present an improved version of a MCS-based platform, named City Soundscape, which allows exploiting any Android-based device as a portable acoustic monitoring station and that offers city managers an effective and straightforward tool for planning Noise Reduction Interventions (NRIs) within their cities. The platform also now offers a new logical microservices architecture

Improving Access and Mental Health for Youth Through Virtual Models of Care

The overall objective of this research is to evaluate the use of a mobile health smartphone application (app) to improve the mental health of youth between the ages of 14–25 years, with symptoms of anxiety/depression. This project includes 115 youth who are accessing outpatient mental health services at one of three hospitals and two community agencies. The youth and care providers are using eHealth technology to enhance care. The technology uses mobile questionnaires to help promote self-assessment and track changes to support the plan of care. The technology also allows secure virtual treatment visits that youth can participate in through mobile devices. This longitudinal study uses participatory action research with mixed methods. The majority of participants identified themselves as Caucasian (66.9%). Expectedly, the demographics revealed that Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders were highly prevalent within the sample (71.9% and 67.5% respectively). Findings from the qualitative summary established that both staff and youth found the software and platform beneficial

Design and Prototype Evaluation of a Mini Program for Diet Management Focusing on Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Background Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global public health problem and has become a common chronic non-communicable disease threatening human well-being. There is no effective cure for CKD, and once it progresses to end-stage renal disease, only renal replacement therapy can be performed, which brings a heavy medical burden to families and the country. Dietetic-nutritional management is closely related to delaying the progression of CKD and improving health outcomes and is essential in the treatment of CKD. However, dietary compliance of patients is currently a major challenge in clinical work. With the integration of mobile Internet and healthcare, mobile health, represented by smartphones, has become an important tool for healthcare services. Previous studies have shown that information tools can motivate users to make positive eating behavior changes and improve their confidence in achieving their dietary goals. In recent years, diet management tools for CKD patients have gradually increased in China, but most patients still face difficulties in self-managing their diet at home. Aims Given that the advantages of WeChat Mini Program in China and the cost limitation of the study, the purpose of this study is to follow the concept of human-centred design to design an open accessible WeChat Mini Program for home diet management, and with CKD patients and caregivers as the target users, to ultimately improve the patient's experience of diet management and improve their dietary compliance to obtain the optimal benefits of medical nutrition therapy. To understand the usability and design flaws of this Mini Program through the prototype development and evaluation, to further improve the design and provide a reference for future development. Methods This study was divided into three stages. The first stage was the requirements analysis of diet management Mini Program: stakeholders, i.e., CKD patients and caregivers, renal dietitians, nephrologists, and specialist nurses, were interviewed through a qualitative study to explore their functional needs and suggestions for the Mini Program. The second stage was the design and expert evaluation of the Mini Program for CKD patients: based on literature review and stakeholders' requirements analysis and drawing on the features of the existing applications on the market, the first draft of the written design of this Mini Program was completed and then the written design and technical feasibility of the Mini Program were evaluated by multidisciplinary experts, including renal dietitians, nephrologists and specialist nurses, as well as WeChat Mini Program development technicians, to further revise and finalize the written design of this Mini Program. The third stage was prototype development and evaluation of the Mini Program: using Mocking Bot to develop the prototype and then was a mixed study, 15 testers were recruited to evaluate the prototype by convenience sampling. mHealth App Usability Questionnaire (MAUQ) (patient version) was used to collect quantitative usability scores, and qualitative interviews were conducted to explore their experience and suggestions for improvement of the Mini Program. Results 1. Requirements analysis of diet management Mini Program: 22 stakeholders were interviewed, including 9 CKD patients, 4 caregivers, and 9 clinical professionals. Three themes are extracted, which are attitudes towards the Mini Program (overall, highly expected the Mini Program for diet management), functional requirements of the Mini Program (including provide comprehensive diet management information, diet decision support, professional diet self-management skills, and emotional support channels), and performance requirements of the Mini Program (easy to use and learn, with simple interface). There are 12 specific functional requirements, which is expected to provide reliable dietary knowledge, food nutrient query, individualized dietary advice, dietary nutrition monitoring, customize individual recipes, recommend disease-specific foods, diet record and analysis, nutrition consultation, promote family participation, communication among patients, user feedback, and intelligent reminder. 2. Design and expert evaluation of the Mini Program: After two rounds of evaluation and feedback from multidisciplinary experts, the final version of the written design of the Mini Program was formed, including 4 modules, namely, Home Page, Interactive Community, Health Record, Personal Centre; and 19 functions, including Site Search, Diet Management, Popular Science Articles, and News (Home Page), Circle of Patients, My Doctors, Doctor's Lectures, My Family (Interactive Community), BP Record, BG Record, Wt. Record, Exercise Record (Health Record), and Basic Information Setting, Health Report, My equipment, My favourites, My Posts, Product Introduction, Feedback and Help (Personal Centre). 3. Prototype development and evaluation of the Mini Program: the prototype developed in this study was high-fidelity and interactive. Quantitative result: the mean value of the overall scoring of MAUQ was 1.39, with a standard deviation of 0.29, indicating that patients and caregivers recognize the Mini Program as usable. Qualitative result: clinical professionals, CKD patients, and caregivers who participated in the testing have a high acceptance of the Mini Program. Clinical professionals consider the Mini Program to be comprehensive, helpful for patients' diet management, and to reduce the burden of clinical diet education; patients and caregivers consider the Mini Program to be a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and practical tool that facilitates access to professional knowledge, improves their confidence in diet management and social support, and they have a positive attitude towards using it and express their great expectations. The main shortcomings of the Mini Program are the need to adjust the colour scheme and optimize the layout of the user interface and to highlight the main functions of diet management, and to realize the function of voice use if the development technology is feasible. Conclusion The Mini Program designed in this study meet the needs and demands of home diet management for CKD patients and may positively affect their diet self-management. In the future, we consider further collaboration with information technology companies and clinical usability assessment and effectiveness evaluation would be necessary, to determine the clinical effect and economic cost-effectiveness of interventions for CKD patients based on such a WeChat Mini Program, and to promote the close integration of mHealth and clinical practice

Participative Urban Health and Healthy Aging in the Age of AI

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2022, held in Paris, France, in June 2022. The 15 full papers and 10 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. They cover topics such as design, development, deployment, and evaluation of AI for health, smart urban environments, assistive technologies, chronic disease management, and coaching and health telematics systems