Prioritizing the Needs of Caregivers of Older Adults to Support Their Help-Seeking Process as a First Step to Develop an eHealth Tool: A TRIAGE method.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Caregivers of functionally dependent older persons sometimes seek formal services to support their relatives. However, this process of help-seeking is complex.
Objective:
The overall objective of the project is to use a co-design approach to develop an eHealth tool to support caregivers in their process of help-seeking. This article presents the first step of the design phase, which aimed to prioritize the users’ needs to be considered during the development of an eHealth tool.
Methods:
Three groups of caregivers, community workers and health and social service professionals participated in either a co-design session (1 or 2) or an advisory committee in two rural areas and one urban area. The needs identified in the academic literature and during a previous study were sorted (TRIAGE method) by the participants (referred to in this paper as co-designers) in order to obtain a consensus on those to be prioritized. Needs identified, grouped and removed were ranked and compared.
Results:
Of the initial list of 32 needs, 12 were modified or merged, 3 added and 7 deleted because co-designers felt that the needs were poorly formulated, redundant, irrelevant or impossible to meet. In the end, 19 needs were identified for the design of the eHealth tool.
Conclusions:
Many of the identified needs are informational (e.g. having access to up-to-date information) and are probably met by existing tools. However, many others are emotional (e.g. being encouraged to use the services) and offer an interesting challenge for an eHealth tool.
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