User-Centered Design Process of an mHealth App for Health Professionals: Case Study.

BACKGROUND: User-centered design processes are infrequently employed and not fully explored for building mobile health (mHealth) apps that are particularly targeted to health professionals as end users. The authors have used a user-centered design-based approach to build an mHealth app for health professionals, tasked to deliver medical laboratory-related information on a daily basis. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to generate a simple and functional user-centered design process for mHealth apps for health professionals. This paper presents the key learnings from design activities. METHODS: A stratified random sample of doctors and nurses was recruited for the study. The design activities were planned in the following sequence: focus group discussion for situation analysis and information architecture, design activity 1 for wireframe designing, design activity 2 for wireframe testing, and user testing sessions 1 and 2. RESULTS: The final design and functions of the app, information architecture, and interactive elements were largely influenced by the participatory design-based user-centered design activities. As a result of the design process, we could identify the mental models of processing requests for information and personal preferences based on the experience. These findings were directly or indirectly incorporated into the app design. Furthermore, finding alternative ways of working within time constraints and cultural barriers and the methods employed to manage the challenges of interdisciplinary discourse stood out among the lessons learned. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend a user-centered design process based on a participatory design approach in mHealth app design, enriched with focus group discussions where possible.

Reducing delivery times of emergency blood products through pneumatic tube systems.

OBJECTIVES: Recent advances in damage control resuscitation have advocated a push for early transfusion to maintain circulating volume and minimization of crystalloid use. While measures such as using rapid-matched group specific blood or uncrossmatched blood have been implemented to shorten this wait, delivery times can still be improved. We explored reducing delivery times by use of a pneumatic tube delivery system already built in our hospital. Few studies have evaluated this using fresh blood samples for one-way transport. We modified and evaluated our pneumatic tube delivery system for delivery timings and quality parameters; designing a robust protocol that also tested aged blood for simulated returns unlike other previous studies. METHODS: Delivery timings of emergency blood products by our present portering system were collected and compared against that of products sent through the pneumatic tube system (PTS). The samples sent through the PTS were also tested and analyzed for temperature, quality, and hemolysis in accordance with established blood banking quality guidelines. RESULTS: Blood products delivered by our PTS showed satisfactory conformance with all parameters of temperature, timing, and hemolysis. We showed a significant reduction in transport delivery times from mean of 8 min 43 s to 2 min 23 s. CONCLUSIONS: Delivery of blood products by our modified PTS is safe and significantly reduces delivery time. This time savings could be clinically significant in resuscitation. Usage of the PTS could also cut down on workforce utilization of porters, freeing them up for other tasks in the hospital.