JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Heart failure (HF) does not only affect the person diagnosed with the syndrome, but also family members often having the role as informal carers. The needs of these carers are not always met and, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) could have the potential to support them in their everyday life. However, knowledge is lacking about how family members perceive ICT and see opportunities for this technology to support them.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to explore perceptions about ICT solutions as supportive aids, amongst family members to persons with HF.

Methods:

A qualitative design was applied. Eight focus groups, with 23 family members to persons affected by HF were performed. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to find participants with diverse backgrounds. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Results:

The analysis revealed four categories and nine subcategories capturing the perceptions about ICT solutions as supportive aids. The first category, about how ICT could provide relevant support, included descriptions on how ICT could be used for communication with health care personnel, for information and communication retrieval and for opportunities to interact with persons in similar life situations and to share support with peer and extended family. The second category, about how ICT could provide access, entailed how ICT could offer solutions accessible unbound in time and space and, that ICT could be both timely and adaptable to different life situations. ICT could also provide an arena for family members they might not have had access to otherwise. The third category, concerned how ICT could be too impersonal, and that ICT could entail limited personal interaction and individualisation, which could cause mistrust and perceptions about usability. It was emphasised that ICT could not replace physical meetings. The fourth category, considered how ICT could be out of scope, and mirrored that some family members were generally uninterested in ICT and had difficulties envisioning how it could be used for support. It was also discussed to be a solution more for the future.

Conclusions:

Family members described multiple usages for ICT, and ICT could provide access to relevant sources of information from which family members potentially could receive and exchange support. ICT was also discussed to entail limitations, and was out of scope for some, but with expected use in future. Even though some family members seem hesitant to ICT solutions in general, this might not mean they are unreceptive to suggestions about usage from e.g. health care. Thus, a variety of factors should be considered to facilitate future implementations of ICT tools in clinical practice.