Fibromyalgia is a rheumatic pathology that causes a wide range of symptoms that can
appear individually, or in sets, such as fatigue, sleep disorders, attention, and concentration
deficit, also having connection with musculoskeletal, psychological, cardiovascular,
gastrointestinal disorders. This pathology has a greater predominance in women and, in
Portugal, for every man there are six women with the diagnosis and a total of approximately
two hundred thousand people (2.1% of the population).
The non-pharmaceutical way to mitigate these symptoms is through physical therapy.
Considering the pandemic moment in which we live, there have been many difficulties in
having physical therapy sessions because of the fear of infection through contact with their
physical therapists. There are also people who live in more isolated areas and with little access
to healthcare, who often must travel to larger urban centers to get the care they need. Moreover,
these people have difficulties in self-managing their illness, where depending on the day their
symptoms can get worse, and they do not know how to deal with them.
Currently, there is no specialized solution for people with this diagnosis that solves these
problems, so this dissertation aims to study and design a solution that allows people diagnosed
with fibromyalgia to self-manage their pathology, as well as have a closer contact with their
physical therapist, by being able to perform their sessions in a hybrid way, i.e., in person or
remotely.
This solution was designed using a Co-Design approach, following the Design Thinking
methodology, where the community (people with the diagnosis, physiotherapists, researchers
and academics) were involved in all stages of the process, from problem identification and
idealization of their solutions, to prototyping and its validation. This solution involved the
development of a mobile application, having several important components, such as self management, telerehabilitation, motivation, community and communication. In order to
evaluate the whole process and the usability of the solution, tests were performed with end
users who had not yet participated in the design of the solution
