Abstract. The growing age of populations brings widespread problems for a range of services, including health care services. Another challenge is the areas of dispersed settlement and decreasing population in rural areas. Urbanization and movement to the larger cities after employment, education, and services has led to decreasing the services in the remote areas even further. In the changing needs of the requirements and challenges of health care entities the use of mobile health care services may provide many benefits to the systems to develop flexible and adjustable health services to citizens. With the help of mobile health care services, the requirements of ever-changing service needs may be responded more efficiently than traditional onsite health care centers.
The purpose of this study is to understand the opportunities of user-centric service design and practices in the design processes of mobile health care services. In the future, mobile health care services may potentially be a medium for implementing the health and social service delivery as one of the standard mediums in order to reduce inconsistencies between habitant areas in Finland. By designing user-centric services with methods that leave room for ongoing development and improvement of mobile health care services.
The nature of the study is a qualitative case study. The research phenomenon is approached by semi-structured interviews, to define practicalities in the planning of a mobile health care services. The target group of the interview is particularly chosen participants from representative organizations from both private and public health sector.
The results of the study confirm the adaptability of user-centric service design in mobile health care services. It also reveals many practical aspects regarding the design process and the possibilities in co-design activities. More precisely, this study suggests that the user of the service can be included in all stages of service design process of mobile health care services in several ways — from defining the need to the implementation and ongoing development. The user-centricity in the context of this study means the users of the service that are involved in the service operations along its way — including employees and other encounters to the service.
The results of the study contribute to the model of service design by assessing its suitability to designing mobile health care services with user-centric approach, and gathering concrete practices of those methods
