JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital health innovations provide an opportunity to improve access to care, information and quality of care during the perinatal period, a critical period of health for mothers and infants. However, research to develop perinatal digital health solutions needs to be informed by actual patient and health system needs in order to optimize implementation, adoption, and sustainability. Human-centered design methods and practices provide an ideal approach to accomplishing this work because they place the patient experience in the health care system at the center of the dialogue.

Objective:

Our aim was to develop a research agenda based on the needs of patients and providers.

Methods:

Development of the research agenda involved a series of activities: (1) review of the BC Digital Health Strategy and Maternity Services Strategy to identify relevant health system priorities; (2) ThoughtExchange® targeting care providers to ascertain their current use and perceived need for digital tools; (3) engagement meetings using human-centered design methods with currently or recently pregnant multilingual patients to understand their health experiences and needs; and (4) a workshop that brought together patients and other project partners to prioritize identified challenges and opportunities for perinatal digital health in a set of research questions.

Results:

Throughout this project we engaged with over 150 researchers and research users. The project was governed by a patient advisory committee including 4 diverse patient partners and a steering committee with representatives from research; health system decision makers and clinical care. As a result of our project activities we identified 12 priority research questions grouped in themes of patient autonomy and support, educational resources for patients and providers, and access to health information as identified and prioritized by the patient project team members.

Conclusions:

Our research agenda highlights needs for perinatal digital health research to support improvements in quality of care in BC. The identified priority research questions are merely a stepping stone in the research process and now need to be actioned by research teams and health systems partners.