Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Feb 7, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 11, 2019 - Apr 8, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 23, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Technology-enabled mental health service reform for Open Arms - Veterans and Families Counselling: A participatory design study
ABSTRACT
Background:
The impact of mental ill-health on every aspect of the lives of a large number of Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, their partners and families is widely recognised. Recent Senate inquiries have highlighted gaps in service delivery as well as the need for service reform to ensure appropriate care options for those individuals who are currently engaged with mental health and support services as well as for those that, for a variety of reasons, have not sought help. To that end, successive Australian Governments generally and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs specifically have prioritised veteran-centric reform. Open Arms is an Australia-wide service that provides counselling and support to current and former ADF personnel, and their family members, for mental health conditions.
Objective:
To develop and configure a prototypic online platform for Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling (formerly Veterans and Veterans Families Counselling Service) with the Open Arms community in order to enhance the quality of mental health services provided by Open Arms.
Methods:
The study aimed to recruit up to 100 people from the Open Arms community (current and former ADF personnel and their families, health professionals, service managers and administrators) in the Sydney, Canberra, Maitland, Singleton and Port Stephens regions. Participants were invited to participate in four-hour participatory design workshops. A variety of methods were utilised within the workshops, including prompted discussion, review of working prototypes, creation of descriptive artefacts, and group-based development of user journeys.
Results:
Seven participatory design workshops were held, including a total of 49 participants. Participants highlighted that the prototype has the potential to: 1) provide the opportunity for greater and better-informed personal choice in relation to options for care based on level of need and personal preferences; 2) ensure transparency in care by providing the individual with access to all of their personal health information; and 3) improve collaborative care and care continuity by allowing information to be shared securely with current and future providers.
Conclusions:
Our findings highlight the value of actively engaging stakeholders in participatory design processes for the development and configuration of new technologies.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.