JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated “going remote” with the delivery, support, and assessment of a study intervention targeting older adults enrolled in a clinical trial. While remotely delivering and assessing technology is not new, there are few methods available in the literature that are proven to be effective with diverse populations, and none for older adults specifically. Older adults comprise a very diverse population, including in terms of their experience with and access to technology, making this a challenging endeavor.

Objective:

Our objective was to remotely deliver and conduct usability testing for a mobile health technology intervention for older adult participants enrolled in a clinical trial of the technology.

Methods:

We developed a conceptual model for remote operations (called FAR Ops) that combined the general requirements for spaceflight operations with Agile project management processes to quickly respond to this challenge. Using this framework, we iteratively created “care packages” that were sent to study participants in order to deliver the study intervention (a medication management app) and assess its usability. Usability data was collected using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and a novel usability questionnaire developed to collect more in-depth data.

Results:

We successfully delivered 21 care packages. We succeeded in designing and deploying a minimum viable product in less than 6 weeks, generally maintained a 2-week sprint cycle, and achieved a 40-50% return rate for usability assessment instruments.

Conclusions:

The FAR Ops model allowed our team to adopt remote operations for our mHealth trial, in response to interruptions from COVID-19. This approach can be useful for other research or practical projects, under similar circumstances or to improve efficiency, cost, effectiveness, and participant diversity in general.