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User Centered Design to Improve Information Exchange in Diabetes Care Through eHealth

Results from a Small Scale Exploratory Study

  • Patient Facing Systems
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Abstract

Heterogeneity of people with diabetes makes maintaining blood glucose control and achieving therapy adherence a challenge. It is fundamental that patients get actively involved in the management of the disease in their living environments. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the use and acceptance of a self-management system for diabetes developed with User Centered Design Principles in community settings. Persons with diabetes and health professionals were involved the design, development and evaluation of the self-management system; which comprised three iterative cycles: scenario definition, user archetype definition and system development. A comprehensive system was developed integrating modules for the management of blood glucose levels, medication, food intake habits, physical activity, diabetes education and messaging. The system was adapted for two types of principal users (personas): Type 1 Diabetes user and Type 2 Diabetes user. The system was evaluated by assessing the use, the compliance, the attractiveness and perceived usefulness in a multicenter randomized pilot study involving 20 patients and 24 treating professionals for a period of four weeks. Usage and compliance of the co-designed system was compared during the first and the last two weeks of the study, showing a significantly improved behaviour of patients towards the system for each of the modules. This resulted in a successful adoption by both type of personas. Only the medication module showed a significantly different use and compliance (p= 0.01) which can be explained by the different therapeutic course of the two types of diabetes. The involvement of patients to make their own decisions and choices form design stages was key for the adoption of a self-management system for diabetes.

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Funding

This study was funded by European Commission under the 7th Framework Program grant agreement number 216270.3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photonics Technology and Bioengineering Department, Life Supporting Technologies Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Giuseppe Fico, Alessio Fioravanti, Maria Eugenia Beltrán-Jaunsarás & Maria Teresa Arredondo

  2. ITACA, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Antonio Martinez-Millana & Vicente Traver

  3. Ergonomics and Vehicle Interaction, Fraunhofer-Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), Berlin, Germany

    Jan-Paul Leuteritz

Authors
  1. Giuseppe Fico
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  2. Antonio Martinez-Millana
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  3. Jan-Paul Leuteritz
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  4. Alessio Fioravanti
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  5. Maria Eugenia Beltrán-Jaunsarás
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  6. Vicente Traver
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  7. Maria Teresa Arredondo
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Fico.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Patient Facing Systems

European Commission under the 7th Framework Program grant agreement number 216270.3.

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Fico, G., Martinez-Millana, A., Leuteritz, JP. et al. User Centered Design to Improve Information Exchange in Diabetes Care Through eHealth. J Med Syst 44, 2 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-019-1472-5

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