Design and Evaluation of a Technological Platform for Monitoring Patients with Dementia: Unifying Requirements from Mexican Day Centers.

The monitoring of patients with dementia who receive comprehensive care in day centers allows formal caregivers to make better decisions and provide better care to patients. For instance, cognitive and physical therapies can be tailored based on the current stage of disease progression. In the context of day centers of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer, this work aims to design and evaluate Alzaid, a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia. Alzaid was devised using a participatory design methodology that consisted in eliciting and validating requirements from 22 and 9 participants, respectively, which were unified to guide the construction of a high-fidelity prototype evaluated by 14 participants. The participants were formal caregivers, medical staff, and management. This work contributes a high-fidelity prototype of a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia considering restrictions and requirements of four Mexican day centers. In general, the participants perceived the prototype as quite likely to be useful, usable, and relevant in the job of monitoring patients with dementia (p-value < 0.05). By evaluating and designing Alzaid that unifies requirements for monitoring patients of four day centers, this work is the first effort towards a standard monitoring process of patients with dementia in the context of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer.

Design and evaluation of a dashboard to support the comprehension of the progression of patients with dementia in day centers.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In day centers, people with dementia are assigned to specific groups to receive care according to the progression of the disease. This article presents the design and evaluation of a dashboard aimed at facilitating the comprehension of the progression of people with dementia to support decision-making of healthcare professionals (HCPs) when determining patient-group assignment. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A participatory design methodology was followed to build the dashboard. The grounded theory methodology was utilized to identify requirements. A total of 8 HCPs participated in the design and evaluation of a low-fidelity prototype. The perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the high-fidelity prototype was evaluated by 15 HCPs (from several day centers) and 38 psychology students utilizing a questionnaire based on the technology acceptance model. RESULTS: HCPs perceived the dashboard as extremely likely to be useful (Mdn=6.5 out of 7) and quite likely to be usable (Mdn=6 out of 7). Psychology students perceived the dashboard as quite likely to be useful and usable (both with Mdn=6). CONCLUSIONS: Making use of a participatory design helped foster in HCPs a sense of ownership of the dashboard, thus facilitating its acceptance. The creation of low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes led to identifying valuable, timely, and specific feedback at different stages of the development process as well as to establishing a set of lessons learned for the development of dashboards in the healthcare domain.

A comparative case study of 2D, 3D and immersive-virtual-reality applications for healthcare education.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The workings of medical educational tools are implemented using a myriad of approaches ranging from presenting static content to immersing students in gamified virtual-reality environments. The objective of this paper is to explore whether and how different approaches for designing medical educational tools affect students' learning performance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Four versions of an educational tool for the study of clinical cases were implemented: a 2D version, a gamified 2D version, a gamified 3D version, and a gamified immersive-virtual-reality version. All complying with the same functional requirements. Each version was used and evaluated by an independent group of students. The participants (n = 78) evaluated the applications regarding usefulness, usability, and gamification. Afterward, the students took an exam to assess the retention of information on the clinical cases presented. RESULTS: One-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank tests confirmed that the participants perceived that it was at least quite likely that gamification helped improved their learning. In addition, based on the participants' perception, the gamification of the immersive-virtual-reality version helped the most to improve their learning performance in comparison with the gamified 2D and 3D versions. CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of whether different versions of a medical educational tool (complying with the same functional requirements) are perceived as equally useful and usable, the design approach (either 2D, 3D, or immersive-virtual-reality with or without gamification) affects students' retention of information on clinical cases.

Design and evaluation of a mobile application for monitoring patients with Alzheimer's disease: A day center case study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: This paper presents Alzheed, a mobile application for monitoring patients with Alzheimer's disease at day centers as well as a set of design recommendations for the development of healthcare mobile applications. The Alzheed project was conducted at Day Center "Dorita de Ojeda" that is focused on the care of patients with Alzheimer's disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A software design methodology based on participatory design was employed for the design of Alzheed. This methodology is both iterative and incremental and consists of two main iterative stages: evaluation of low-fidelity prototypes and evaluation of high-fidelity prototypes. Low-fidelity prototypes were evaluated by 11 day center's healthcare professionals (involved in the design of Alzheed), whereas high-fidelity prototypes were evaluated using a questionnaire based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) by the same healthcare professionals plus 30 senior psychology undergraduate students uninvolved in the design of Alzheed. RESULTS: Healthcare professional participants perceived Alzheed as extremely likely to be useful and extremely likely to be usable, whereas senior psychology undergraduate students perceived Alzheed as quite likely to be useful and quite likely to be usable. Particularly, the median and mode of the TAM questionnaire were 7 (extremely likely) for healthcare professionals and 6 (quite likely) for psychology students (for both constructs: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use). One-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were performed to confirm the significance of the median for each construct. CONCLUSIONS: From the experience of designing Alzheed, it can be concluded that co-designing with healthcare professionals leads to (i) fostering group endorsement, which prevents resistance to change and (ii) helps to meet the needs of both healthcare professionals and patients, guaranteeing the usefulness of the application. In addition, evaluation of mobile healthcare applications by users involved and uninvolved in the application's design process helps to improve the ease of use of the application.