Evaluation on Mobile Application for Health Intervention

Abstract: With the rise of portable devices, the interest in health and medical applications(mhealth applications) has risen, and the importance of evaluating these applications is critical. The application stores on portable devices only require a good application quality and not the content. The content of the medical health applications could be harmful and need to be evaluated to decrease the potential health risks. In this report, a new mobile health application named POSITIVE gets evaluated with the help of interviewed questionnaires and user­personas. The POSITIVE application target is the older population with their aim to maintain and improve the intrinsic capacity involving primary care and caregivers. POSITIVE application content is monitored by customized exercise programs with medical tests with associated help devices.  The evaluation was done by creating user personas that give a user overview. User personas were designed with the help of data obtained through a interview protocol. The interview protocol was design for this specific evaluation with the help of research questionnaire tools. Questionnaire tools used for creating the interview protocol were the system usability scale(SUS), service user technology acceptability questionnaire(SUTAQ), patient activation measure(PAM), elderly information technology ability tool(EITAT), and mobile health app usability questionnaire(MAUQ) The results show that participants with a higher level of health problems had a lower exercise activity in the application. Participants with lower health problems have a higher exercise activity. Both participants’ groups liked the application’s design and felt it motivated them. Critiques towards the application were to have better customized exercises.