JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Consumer healthcare technology shows potential to improve outcomes for community-dwelling persons with chronic conditions, yet health application (app) quality varies considerably. In partnership with patients and family caregivers, hospital clinicians developed Care4myHeart, a mobile health app for heart failure (HF) self-management.

Objective:

The aim of this paper is to report the outcomes of the nurse-led design process in the form of the features and functions of the developed app, Care4myHeart.

Methods:

Seven patients, four family caregivers and seven multidisciplinary hospital clinicians collaborated in a Design Thinking process of innovation. The co-design process, involving interviews, design workshops and prototype feedback sessions, incorporated the lived experience of stakeholders and evidence-based literature in a design which would be relevant and developed with rigour.

Results:

The home screen displays the priority HF self-management components with a reminder summary, general information on the condition and a settings tab. The health management section allows patients to list healthcare team member’s contact details, schedule medical appointments and store documents. The My Plan section contains nine important self-management components with a combination of information and advice pages, graphical representation of patient data, feedback and more. The greatest strength of the co-design process to achieve the design outcomes was the involvement of local patients, family caregivers and clinicians. Additionally, incorporating the literature, guidelines and current practices into the design strengthened the relevance of the app to the healthcare context. However, the strength of context-specificity is also a limitation to portability, and the final design is limited to the stakeholders involved in its development.

Conclusions:

We recommend health app development teams strategically incorporate relevant stakeholders and literature to design mobile health solutions which are rigorously designed from a solid evidence-base, and relevant to those who will use or recommend their use. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.