User Centered Design of a COPD Remote Monitoring Application Experiences from the EU project United 4 Health
Recent health reforms in Norway have produced changes at all levels of the health sector, bringing to light a need for technology solutions explicitly designed for enhancing end user collaboration. Telemedicine technology can support in this context new services that enable communication across local borders, optimizing resources and increasing cost effectiveness. This study focuses on the user centered design, iterative development and evaluation of the user interface of a mobile application for a new telemedicine service for remote monitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. The tablet device application was developed based on information gathered in a workshop and group interviews where the end users, e.g. patients and health professionals, described their preferred way of interacting with the telemedicine technology. User evaluations showed positive results on the ease of use and user satisfaction regarding the interaction with the application. Application's user interface refinements were made iteratively through several end users' evaluations, resulting in a fully developed system suitable for remote monitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. Furthermore, the process led to the deployment of a telemedicine system, adopted by the partners of the project United4Health as part of the 7 Framework Programme for Research of the European Union. Keywords user centered design; telemedicine; software development; usability evaluation.