Design for Mobile Mental Health:An Exploratory Review

A large number of mobile mental health apps are available to the public but current knowledge about requirements of designing such solutions is scarce, especially from sociotechnical and user centred points of view. Due to the significant role of mobile apps in the mental health service models, identifying the design requirements of mobile mental health solutions is crucial. Some of those requirements have been addressed individually in the literature, but there are few research studies that show a comprehensive picture of this domain. This exploratory review aims to facilitate such holistic understanding. The main search keywords of the review were identified in a cross-disciplinary requirements workshop. The search was started by finding some core references in the healthcare databases. A wider range of references then has been explored using a snowball method. Findings showed that there is a good understanding of individual design requirements in current literature but there are few examples of implementing a combination of different design requirements in real world products. The design processes specifically developed for mobile mental health apps are also rare. Most studies on operational mobile mental health apps address major mental health issues while prevention and wellbeing areas are underdeveloped. In conclusion, the main recommendations for designing future mobile mental health solutions include: moving towards sociotechnical and open design strategies, understanding and creating shared value, recognizing all dimensions of efficacy, bridging design and medical research and development, and considering an ecosystem perspective

Dental informatics: An emerging biomedical informatics discipline

Biomedical informatics is a maturing discipline. During the last forty years, it has developed into a research discipline of significant scale and scope. One of its subdisciplines, dental informatics, is beginning to emerge as its own entity. While there is a growing cadre of trained dental informaticians, dental faculty and administrators in general are not very familiar with dental informatics as an area of scientific inquiry. Many confuse informatics with information technology (IT), are unaware of its scientific methods and principles, and cannot relate dental informatics to biomedical informatics as a whole. This article delineates informatics from information technology and explains the types of scientific questions that dental and other informaticians typically explore. Scientific investigation in informatics centers primarily on model formulation, system development, system implementation, and the study of effects. Informatics draws its scientific methods mainly from information science, computer science, cognitive science, and telecommunications. Dental informatics shares many types of research questions and methods with its parent discipline, biomedical informatics. However, there are indications that certain research questions in dental informatics require novel solutions that have not yet been developed in other informatics fields

Digital dentistry in the computer age

Background and Overview. Computers are becoming an integral part of the practice of dentistry. Smaller, smarter and more ergonomic computing devices will support an increasing proportion of dental practice activities. Technology will make practice management more efficient, mainly by reducing transactional overhead. Educational software and intelligent assistants will increasingly support the needs for decision making in clinical practice. Research will benefit from automated tools for data acquisition, management and analysis. Conclusions. Dentistry must actively shape the application of technology. It can do this by developing a cadre of experts in dental informatics, relying on sound research principles, effectively disseminating best practices and developing strategic objectives for the implementation of technology. Clinical Implications. Computer technology is an essential ingredient for state-of-the-art patient care. Dentists must stay current with this rapidly developing field to make appropriate choices in their use of technology

Evaluation of educational software

Evaluation is an important component of developing educational software. Ideally, such evaluation quantifies and qualifies the effects of a new educational intervention on the learning process and outcomes. Conducting meaningful and rigorous educational evaluation is difficult, however. Challenges include defining and measuring educational outcomes, accounting for media effects, coping with practical problems in designing studies, and asking the right research questions. Practical considerations that make the design of evaluation studies difficult include confounding, potentially small effect sizes, contamination effects, and ethics. Two distinct approaches to evaluation are objectivist and subjectivist. These two complement each other in describing the whole range of effects a new educational program can have. Objectivist demonstration studies should be preceded by measurement studies that assess the reliability and validity of the evaluation instrument(s) used. Many evaluation studies compare the performance of learners who are exposed to either the new program or a more traditional approach. However, this method is problematic because test or exam performance is often a weak indicator of competence and may fail to capture important nuances in outcomes. Subjectivist studies are more qualitative in nature and may provide insights complementary to those gained with objectivist studies. Several published examples are used in this article to illustrate different evaluation methods. Readers are encouraged to contemplate a wide range of evaluation study designs and explore increasingly complex questions when evaluating educational software

Dental concepts in the unified medical language system

Objective: Currently, no comprehensive, controlled vocabulary for dentistry is available. The objective of this study was to determine how well the Unified Medical Language System, the largest repository of concepts and terms in biomedicine, represents dental concepts. Method and materials: The dental subset of concepts was extracted from Unified Medical Language System using the software program APEX (APplication for the EXtraction of domain-specific concepts). The relationships contained in the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus were used to locate the concepts related to 12 seed terms. The Encyclopédie Médico-Chirurgicale (513 dental terms) and the Diagnostic Codes developed by Leake et al (124 terms) were compared to the dental subset. Terms were classified as exact match, related term, or no match. The resultant matching characteristics were compared to those determined by the National Library of Medicine/Agency for Health Care Policy and Research Large Scale Vocabulary Test. Results: The dental subset of Unified Medical Language System contained 948 concepts. The Encyclopédie Médico-Chirurgicale and the Diagnostic Codes exhibited similar matching characteristics for exact match (61.6% and 58.9%, respectively) and related term (38.0% and 32.2%, respectively). For no match, the matching frequencies were significantly different (P < .001). Conclusion: The Unified Medical Language System may be a comprehensive source of terms suitable for various representation requirements in dentistry

Developing high-quality educational software

The development of effective educational software requires a systematic process executed by a skilled development team. This article describes the core skills required of the development team members for the six phases of successful educational software development. During analysis, the foundation of product development is laid including defining the audience and program goals, determining hardware and software constraints, identifying content resources, and developing management tools. The design phase creates the specifications that describe the user interface, the sequence of events, and the details of the content to be displayed. During development, the pieces of the educational program are assembled. Graphics and other media are created, video and audio scripts written and recorded, the program code created, and support documentation produced. Extensive testing by the development team (alpha testing) and with students (beta testing) is conducted. Carefully planned implementation is most likely to result in a flawless delivery of the educational software and maintenance ensures up-to-date content and software. Due to the importance of the sixth phase, evaluation, we have written a companion article on it that follows this one. The development of a CD-ROM product is described including the development team, a detailed description of the development phases, and the lessons learned from the project

Computer-based oral health records on the World Wide Web

Recently, the World Wide Web has emerged as a platform for computer-based oral health records. Web-based patient records can make teledentistry an instant reality. Because an increasing number of dental care providers can access Web pages, traditional barriers to exchanging information are dropping. Web-based records also make cumulative, longitudinal patient records possible. Sophisticated security mechanisms can ensure the integrity and confidentiality of patient information. Because Web-based systems are simpler to install and configure, the cost of operating them may be reduced. However, their development Is complex, difficult, and expensive because the Web was not developed as a programming environment. Furthermore, the technologies underlying the Web are constantly evolving, forcing developers to continuously reengineer their systems. In addition, several policy questions, such as storage of and access to computer-based patient records, have to be answered. This article describes CMSWeb, a Web-based clinical information system implemented at Temple University School of Dentistry