- Title
- Using co-design in mobile health system development: A qualitative study with experts in co-design and mobile health system development
- Creator
- Noorbergen, Tyler J.; Adam, Marc T. P.; Teubner, Timm; Collins, Clare E.
- Relation
- JMIR mHealth and uHealth Vol. 9, Issue 11, no. e27896
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/27896
- Publisher
- Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR)
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Background: The proliferation of mobile devices has enabled new ways of delivering health services through mobile health systems. Researchers and practitioners emphasize that the design of such systems is a complex endeavor with various pitfalls, including limited stakeholder involvement in design processes and the lack of integration into existing system landscapes. Co-design is an approach used to address these pitfalls. By recognizing users as experts of their own experience, co-design directly involves users in the design process and provides them an active role in knowledge development, idea generation, and concept development. Objective: Despite the existence of a rich body of literature on co-design methodologies, limited research exists to guide the co-design of mobile health (mHealth) systems. This study aims to contextualize an existing co-design framework for mHealth applications and construct guidelines to address common challenges of co-designing mHealth systems. Methods: Tapping into the knowledge and experience of experts in co-design and mHealth systems development, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study consisting of 16 semistructured interviews. Thereby, a constructivist ontological position was adopted while acknowledging the socially constructed nature of reality in mHealth system development. Purposive sampling across web-based platforms (eg, Google Scholar and ResearchGate) and publications by authors with co-design experience in mHealth were used to recruit co-design method experts (n=8) and mHealth system developers (n=8). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis along with our objectives of contextualizing the co-design framework and constructing guidelines for applying co-design to mHealth systems development. Results: The contextualized framework captures important considerations of the mHealth context, including dedicated prototyping and implementation phases, and an emphasis on immersion in real-world contexts. In addition, 7 guidelines were constructed that directly pertain to mHealth: understanding stakeholder vulnerabilities and diversity, health behavior change, co-design facilitators, immersion in the mHealth ecosystem, postdesign advocates, health-specific evaluation criteria, and usage data and contextual research to understand impact. Conclusions: System designers encounter unique challenges when engaging in mHealth systems development. The contextualized co-design framework and constructed guidelines have the potential to serve as a shared frame of reference to guide the co-design of mHealth systems and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration at the nexus of information technology and health research.
- Subject
- co-design (20); mHealth (622); guidelines (8); qualitative study (9); mobile phone (536); SDG 16; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1451898
- Identifier
- uon:44301
- Identifier
- ISSN:2291-5222
- Rights
- © Tyler J Noorbergen, Marc T P Adam, Timm Teubner, Clare E Collins. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (https://mhealth.jmir.org), 10.11.2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://mhealth.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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