Research of a m-health app design for information management of MDTMs

The m-Health apps have been adopted broadly in both medical and family environment. They hold potential to support the work of medical staff and provide help in individual health care. However, the emphasis on the benefits of mobility and the functionality is not enough. Relatively little empirical research guides for the app development. The m-Health apps should be developed for specific purposes with the consideration of the specific users and using contexts. This paper introduces a research for a m-Health app design in support of information management for multidisciplinary medical team meetings (MDTMs) in order to enhancing meeting efficiency. The contextual design methods were used as the guideline for the design. The app design based on tablet was developed and tested by medical teams in this study. The results indicated that the most medical staffs held positive and supportive attitudes to the m-Health app as an intervention in their medical meetings. The recommended app helped medical staffs including oncologists and nurses etc. to improve their meeting efficiency through information management such as setting up meeting schedule, making records for meetings, updating the patients’ information, etc. The results also revealed that the choices of different mobile platforms should be taken into account when developing m-Health apps since it would greatly influence user experience in utility and usability in the specific contexts. Design recommendations were summarized for future design.