Trabalho de projeto de mestrado, Engenharia Informática, 2022, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasChronic diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, and coronary heart disease are the main causes of death in
developed countries. These are a major contributor to annual medical costs for patients and healthcare
providers in North America and Europe. These diseases can be avoided, and its risks mitigated with
changes in the people’s lifestyle and daily habits. The Train4Health Simulation Software, the tool in
which this thesis is centred on, aims to help students in areas such as Nursing, Pharmacy, Nutrition, and
Sports Sciences, in training behaviour change techniques with virtual patients. These techniques are
useful for inducing behaviour change in patients with chronic diseases, consequently minimizing the
risks associated with chronic diseases. The application can be used in the classroom or on its own at any
time to allow students to train at their own pace and uses gamification strategies to improve the user’s
learning experience.
The simulation software has been under development for three years, counting this iteration, and this
was its last scheduled iteration of development, with the possibility for future development. A virtual
patient case study had already been implemented in previous iterations. In this iteration, the remaining
three patient case studies were implemented together with the long intervention functionality. The long
intervention feature attempts to recreate multiple consultations with the patient, these consultations have
continuity between them and are sequential. In addition, significant improvements were made to the
application's interface and new features were implemented. The improvements were based on the results
obtained in the previous iteration’s user study and another user study conducted during this iteration on
the previous iteration’s version of the application. This study was conducted on a classroom during an
educational event called PAL and counted with 23 student participants from the target demographics of
the application. The PAL user study showed inferior results when compared to the results from the
previous iteration’s user study. Which can be attributed to a different participant sample and the absence
of participant-interviewer bias.
Another user study was conducted at the end of development of the third iteration of the Simulation
Software. This user study counted with 31 participants from the target demographics of the project, as
well as from the area of computer science. The obtained results from this study showed significant
improvements when compared to the PAL user study, in areas such as usability, perceived value,
information clarity and perception. The mean system usability scale (SUS) score was 85.5, considered
“Excellent” and on the 96-100 percentile of SUS item benchmarks. Comments made by the participants
regarding the application were analysed, interpreted and adjustments were implemented in the
application to improve mentioned aspects.
This project was developed in the context of the Train4Health project (2019-1-PT01-KA203-061389)
which is funded by the European Erasmus+ Agency and has an international multidisciplinary team
from seven educational institutions (Faculdade de Ciências e Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade
de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Santarém, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Royal College
of Surgeons in Ireland, European Students Union e University of Maribor)
