Robina Weermeijer – Unsplash
Author
Sustainable development goals
Themes
- lifestyle
- adherence to therapy
- hypertension
- smart monitoring
Tools
- co-design
- wearable sensors
- app
- gamification
- personas
- motion classification algorithms
- image analysis algorithms
What does the promoted behavioral change consist of?
In this way, the aim is to stimulate the modification of two behaviours:
- Improved self-monitoring of the hypertensive patient’s health, thanks to a greater awareness of his pathology and prescribed therapies, through an appropriate notifications reminding him of the specific therapy to be taken, so as to make taking medication over time a habitual gesture for the chronically ill patient.
- With visualisation of adherence trends for each medicine and appropriate feedback and information, increased engagement with the therapy, so that the patient becomes more aware of his or her treatment pathway. These behavioural changes ultimately aim to improve the patient’s health by increasing adherence to the therapies prescribed by the doctor.
What are the main features of the tools designed/implemented to promote behavioral change and how have they been tested?
This customisation is realised after the creation of patient personas, representations of end-users based on real data collected through questionnaires from a large number of patients, which indicate during software development what the real needs of each specific group of users are and how they behave in certain situations. Currently, experimentation is in progress in the creation and validation phase of the Personas for hypertensive patients.
In parallel, by means of usability tests and focus groups with doctors, the platform for therapy entry and adherence verification for doctors is being developed.
What results have been achieved? What are the potentials and obstacles?
The Personas obtained show two very different types of users with different expectations of the app, starting from its usability to the functions to be added.
Intentions towards the use of the wearable to confirm the taking of the medicine are also specified.
The Personas obtained thus make it possible to define, albeit at a preliminary stage, the profiles and intentions of two classes of patients with regard to the app.
Further aspects and features will be identified by a study currently being planned on a larger number of patients.
[last update: 08/03/2023]
Research team at PoliMi
Emanuele Tauro, Sarah Solbiati, Claudio Pighini, Enrico Gianluca Caiani – DEIB – Take Care Lab
Research team – Other partners
Gianfranco Parati, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico San Luca, Milano
Alessandra Gorini, Università degli Studi di Milano
Self-financed research (2020 – ongoing)
