TY - JOUR
T1 - The Virtual Inclusive Digital Health Intervention Design to Promote Health Equity (iDesign) Framework for Atrial Fibrillation
T2 - Co-design and Development Study
AU - Isakadze, Nino
AU - Molello, Nancy
AU - MacFarlane, Zane
AU - Gao, Yumin
AU - Spaulding, Erin M.
AU - Mensah, Yvonne Commodore
AU - Marvel, Francoise A.
AU - Khoury, Shireen
AU - Marine, Joseph E.
AU - Michos, Erin D.
AU - Spragg, David
AU - Berger, Ronald D.
AU - Calkins, Hugh
AU - Cooper, Lisa A.
AU - Martin, Seth S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by grants from the American Heart Association, including Health Technology and Innovation Strategically Focused Research Networks (SFRN) grants (20SFRN35380046, 20SFRN35490003) and a Community Health in Action grant to Johns Hopkins University. In addition, we are grateful for funding from Sandra and Larry Small and the Pollin Digital Innovation Fund. We thank Ariel Hicks, our designer, who created the figure for this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 JMIR Human Factors. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/10
Y1 - 2022/10
N2 - Background: Smartphone ownership and mobile app use are steadily increasing in individuals of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds living in the United States. Growing adoption of technology creates a perfect opportunity for digital health interventions to increase access to health care. To successfully implement digital health interventions and engage users, intervention development should be guided by user input, which is best achieved by the process of co-design. Digital health interventions co-designed with the active engagement of users have the potential to increase the uptake of guideline recommendations, which can reduce morbidity and mortality and advance health equity. Objective: We aimed to co-design a digital health intervention for patients with atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia, with patient, caregiver, and clinician feedback and to describe our approach to human-centered design for building digital health interventions. Methods: We conducted virtual meetings with patients with atrial fibrillation (n=8), their caregivers, and clinicians (n=8). We used the following 7 steps in our co-design process: step 1, a virtual meeting focused on defining challenges and empathizing with problems that are faced in daily life by individuals with atrial fibrillation and clinicians; step 2, a virtual meeting focused on ideation and brainstorming the top challenges identified during the first meeting; step 3, individualized onboarding of patients with an existing minimally viable version of the atrial fibrillation app; step 4, virtual prototyping of the top 3 ideas generated during ideation; step 5, further ranking by the study investigators and engineers of the ideas that were generated during ideation but were not chosen as top-3 solutions to be prototyped in step 4; step 6, ongoing engineering work to incorporate top-priority features in the app; and step 7, obtaining further feedback from patients and testing the atrial fibrillation digital health intervention in a pilot clinical study. Results: The top challenges identified by patients and caregivers included addressing risk factor modification, medication adherence, and guidance during atrial fibrillation episodes. Challenges identified by clinicians were complementary and included patient education, addressing modifiable atrial fibrillation risk factors, and remote atrial fibrillation episode management. Patients brainstormed more than 30 ideas to address the top challenges, and the clinicians generated more than 20 ideas. Ranking of the ideas informed several novel or modified features aligned with the Theory of Health Behavior Change, features that were geared toward risk factor modification; patient education; rhythm, symptom, and trigger correlation for remote atrial fibrillation management; and social support. Conclusions: We co-designed an atrial fibrillation digital health intervention in partnership with patients, caregivers, and clinicians by virtually engaging in collaborative creation through the design process. We summarize our experience and describe a flexible approach to human-centered design for digital health intervention development that can guide innovative clinical investigators.
AB - Background: Smartphone ownership and mobile app use are steadily increasing in individuals of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds living in the United States. Growing adoption of technology creates a perfect opportunity for digital health interventions to increase access to health care. To successfully implement digital health interventions and engage users, intervention development should be guided by user input, which is best achieved by the process of co-design. Digital health interventions co-designed with the active engagement of users have the potential to increase the uptake of guideline recommendations, which can reduce morbidity and mortality and advance health equity. Objective: We aimed to co-design a digital health intervention for patients with atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia, with patient, caregiver, and clinician feedback and to describe our approach to human-centered design for building digital health interventions. Methods: We conducted virtual meetings with patients with atrial fibrillation (n=8), their caregivers, and clinicians (n=8). We used the following 7 steps in our co-design process: step 1, a virtual meeting focused on defining challenges and empathizing with problems that are faced in daily life by individuals with atrial fibrillation and clinicians; step 2, a virtual meeting focused on ideation and brainstorming the top challenges identified during the first meeting; step 3, individualized onboarding of patients with an existing minimally viable version of the atrial fibrillation app; step 4, virtual prototyping of the top 3 ideas generated during ideation; step 5, further ranking by the study investigators and engineers of the ideas that were generated during ideation but were not chosen as top-3 solutions to be prototyped in step 4; step 6, ongoing engineering work to incorporate top-priority features in the app; and step 7, obtaining further feedback from patients and testing the atrial fibrillation digital health intervention in a pilot clinical study. Results: The top challenges identified by patients and caregivers included addressing risk factor modification, medication adherence, and guidance during atrial fibrillation episodes. Challenges identified by clinicians were complementary and included patient education, addressing modifiable atrial fibrillation risk factors, and remote atrial fibrillation episode management. Patients brainstormed more than 30 ideas to address the top challenges, and the clinicians generated more than 20 ideas. Ranking of the ideas informed several novel or modified features aligned with the Theory of Health Behavior Change, features that were geared toward risk factor modification; patient education; rhythm, symptom, and trigger correlation for remote atrial fibrillation management; and social support. Conclusions: We co-designed an atrial fibrillation digital health intervention in partnership with patients, caregivers, and clinicians by virtually engaging in collaborative creation through the design process. We summarize our experience and describe a flexible approach to human-centered design for digital health intervention development that can guide innovative clinical investigators.
KW - atrial fibrillation
KW - cardiac
KW - cardiology
KW - digital health intervention
KW - health equity
KW - human-centered design
KW - medication adherence
KW - mobile application
KW - smartphone
KW - virtual health
KW - virtual meeting
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U2 - 10.2196/38048
DO - 10.2196/38048
M3 - Article
C2 - 36315217
AN - SCOPUS:85144780331
SN - 2292-9495
VL - 9
JO - JMIR Human Factors
JF - JMIR Human Factors
IS - 4
M1 - e38048
ER -