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. 2021 Nov 26;18(23):12442.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph182312442.

Digitally Enabled Health Service for the Integrated Management of Hypertension: A Participatory User-Centred Design Process

Vincenzo De Luca  1 , Vanja Lazic  2 , Strahil Birov  3 , Klaus Piesche  3 , Ozan Beyhan  4 , Martino Francesco Pengo  5 , Marcello Melgara  6 , Marie Holm Sherman  7 , Mikael Lilja  8 , Antonija Balenovic  2 , Gianfranco Parati  5   9 , Maria Triassi  1   10 , Raffaele Izzo  10   11 , Guido Iaccarino  10   11 , Maddalena Illario  1   10
Affiliations

Digitally Enabled Health Service for the Integrated Management of Hypertension: A Participatory User-Centred Design Process

Vincenzo De Luca et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

This article describes a user-centred approach taken by a group of five procurers to set specifications for the procurement of value-based research and development services for IT-supported integrated hypertension management. The approach considered the unmet needs of patients and health systems of the involved regions. The procurers established a framework for requirements and a solution design consisting of nine building blocks, divided into three domains: service delivery, devices and integration, and health care organisation. The approach included the development of questionnaires, capturing patients' and professionals' views on possible system functionalities, and a template collecting information about the organisation of healthcare, professionals involved and existing IT systems at the procurers' premises. A total of 28 patients diagnosed with hypertension and 26 professionals were interviewed. The interviewees identified 98 functional requirements, grouped in the nine building blocks. A total of nine use cases and their corresponding process models were defined by the procurers' working group. As result, a digitally enabled integrated approach to hypertension has been designed to allow citizens to learn how to prevent the development of hypertension and lead a healthy lifestyle, and to receive comprehensive, individualised treatment in close collaboration with healthcare professionals.

Keywords: active and healthy aging; chronic care model; digital health; health innovation; hypertension; innovative procurement; integrated care; mHealth; self-monitoring; user-centred design.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Building blocks in the HSMonitor framework.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Nikos’ persona poster developed by Empirica GmbH, represents health and care needs, aspirations, attitudes, disease-related characteristics, of a chronic multimorbid patient, and identify what is important to him. Reprinted from [19].
Figure 3
Figure 3
An example of HSMonitor functional requirements.
Figure 4
Figure 4
An example of HSMonitor use case.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Example of HSMonitor process model.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Use cases and process models covering all HSMonitor aspects.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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