Previously submitted to: JMIR Formative Research (no longer under consideration since Dec 17, 2024)
Date Submitted: Mar 24, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Innovative Approaches for Developing Digital Behavioral Health Interventions: A Case Study for Navigating Challenges in Technology, Skills, and Resources
ABSTRACT
Digital behavioral health interventions provide unprecedented opportunities to increase access to evidence-based treatment but are time-consuming and expensive to develop. Research has identified lack of technical knowledge and skills within the research team, as well as lack of understanding of the product design cycle used in software development, as significant barriers in the development process. Combining agile research methods with an agile development process can facilitate a rapid, iterative, scientifically rigorous, development of digital behavioral interventions, and offers a promising approach to address these barriers. Also, low-cost, no-or low-code platforms to house the intervention, and free online tools to support the development of visual aspects of the intervention, offer possibilities that may be key to successful development yet unknown to many clinical researchers. Here we present a case study of our process developing a digital behavioral intervention using the mHealth Agile Development and Lifecycle, a framework to guide continuous, iterative, user-centered development. Barriers encountered in the development process as well as strategies to address them are discussed, including the utilization of a low-cost, no-code platform and other free or low-cost online tools. Recently established frameworks and methodologies for development together with widely available inexpensive web-based platforms provide important opportunities to accelerate the development of evidence-based digital behavioral health interventions.
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