Research And Practice On A Design Method Of Mhealth Software To Enhance Patient Compliance

How to improve patient compliance is the main problem of chronic disease management.The application of mHealth technology can improve patient compliance,which draws more and more attention.However,in practice,functional design of mHealth software often failed to meet users'needs,making the goal of improving patient compliance cannot be achieved.Goal-directed Design method is one kind of software design method,which can effectively identify users'requirements.Therefore,it is expected to improve the effectiveness of functional design of mHealth software,so as to improve patient compliance.This paper explores the application of Goal-directed Design method in mHealth field,and proposes a design method of mHealth software to enhance patient compliance.Taking the design of a mobile software for hypertension management as an example,this paper demonstrates the practice of this method,through the evaluation tests to prove the effectiveness of it.This paper includes:(1)Research the design methods of mHealth software.The comparison and analysis of existing design methods show that Goal-directed Design has potential advantages in the design of mHealth software,for it can effectively identify different user needs by building user models,so as to improve patient compliance.However,the existing user model is too abstract to support the design of mHealth software.Therefore,this paper proposes a goal-oriented design method to enhance patient compliance.It enhances the content of the user model by adding factors that determine patient compliance,and identifies the specific process of building user models.(2)Build user model and implement requirements analysis of a mobile software for hypertension management.According to the results of quantitative and qualitative research,hypertensive patients were divided into three groups,and user model which could accurately depict patients' characteristics and goals was established.The model identified the differences between hypertensive patients in disease cognition level,self-management ability and experience of using smart phones,and summarized functional expectations and usability expectations of the software.Further,patients' needs for chronic disease management were also identified:to improve self-management ability,to enhance self-management motivation and to receive self-management support.To map users' needs with specific functions,five functional modules of the software were developed.(3)Franwork design and prototype design of the mobile software.Different functional modules were designed based on the results of the user model:For users who lack smart phone experience,usability testing was conducted to improve the usability of Management Plan Module.For users with low emphasis on hypertension disease,persuasive technologies were applied to the design of Health Report Module.For users who wish to receive timely intervention,clinical knowledge was extracted from hypertension guidelines to develop inference service of warnings for high blood pressure.(4)Evaluate patient usage of the mobile application.143 patients received 4 different versions of the app and used them at home.The results showed that patient compliance improved as functional modules of the app were added,and finally maintained at a high level(the rate of 0.73).Interview results showed that the design of the app met different needs of patients so that patients were more complied with it.This paper proposes an extended methodology of Goal-directed Design method to enhance patient compliance.Through the practice on a mobile software for hypertension management,the design method was proved to be effective to improve patient compliance.The research process and results were useful to provide a reference for other related research.