Conceptual Design and Iterative Development of a mHealth App by Clinicians, Patients and heir Families

Heart failure self-management can be challenging but appropriatelydesigned, user-centred mobile health (mHealth) innovations may help. We havebuilt a consumer mHealth application which we plan to implement as an adjunct toexisting specialist multidisciplinary heart failure care at our health service. We havethe double aim to meet the needs of patients and ensure clinical relevance in orderto be recommended by clinicians. This paper reports the participatory, user-centredco-design process of the conceptual design and iterative development of theapplication. Two nurse-led participatory design workshops were conducted with sixclinicians and a patient, which determined user-experience opinions, key featuresand priority functions. The iterative development phase encompassed twoapplication wireframe feedback cycles with seven clinicians, three patients and afamily member. Workshops and wireframe feedback activities took place on thehospital campus predominantly using resources available to clinicians. Softwarebuild was outsourced and was followed by the design team reaching consensus withfeatures and functions of the app. Further development and evaluation of flexibleparticipatory, user-centred methods for use by clinicians to facilitate co-design withconsumers will advance consumer digital health strategies