User-centred design for developing e-Health system for renal patients at home (AppNephro)

Background: Despite the promising benefits of the e-Health approaches (including provide technology-based healthcare services to anyone, anytime, and anywhere), few solutions are adopted in daily practice. User acceptance is one of the major obstacles that hinder the success of technology approaches. End-users often stress misalignments among their problems and the solutions that technology systems aim to solve. In other cases, systems developed are unfriendly or unadjusted to the daily practice of clinicians or patient's life. To maximize user acceptance, the relevance of adopting user-centred design and development techniques is well-known. However, users are often assumed to be a homogeneous group with the same set of requirements, what leads to an ineffective identification and addressment of user requirements. Furthermore, usability and accessibility issues must be carefully addressed to guarantee also the right alignment of solutions with user needs.

Objective: to develop an e-Health system for renal patients at home by adopting user-centred design practices, usability and accessibility standards.

Material and methods: users were categorized in four different groups (i.e., digital patients/caregivers, non-digital patients/caregivers, clinicians and nurses) and a sample was included in the design and development team. Questionnaires and interviews were used to identify user requirements and assess prototypes.

Results: Requirements were considered for every kind of user, what resulted on a multi-faceted e-Health system implying different technologies and functionalities regarding to each target user.

Conclusion: Identification and continuous involvement of all kind of users allow their needs to be properly understood and addressed by technology, raising user acceptance of the final product.