Design, development and evaluation of a mobile-based self-care application for patients with COVID-19 not requiring hospitalization; a study of Northwest of Iran

• Published in: BMC medical informatics and decision making 2023-12, Vol.23 (1), p.280-280, Article 280
• Main Authors: Heydari, Mohammad, Mehraeen, Esmaeil, Javaherikiyan, Elham, Mehrabi, Nahid, Langarizadeh, Mostafa, Aghamohammadi, Vahideh, Moghaddam, Hamed Rezakhani, Nasiri, Khadijeh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access control; Analysis; Applications programs; COVID-19; COVID-19 - therapy; Design; Design analysis; Disease management; Disease prevention; Disease transmission; Education; Epidemics; Evaluation; Health aspects; Health literacy; Hospitalization; Humans; Iran; Mobile app; Mobile Applications; Mobile computing; Mobile-health; Monitoring; Pandemics; Programming languages; Quarantine; Questionnaires; Self Care - methods; Self-care; Self-care, Health; Signs and symptoms; Smartphones; Social interaction; Software; Symptom management; Telemedicine; Usability; User interface; User satisfaction; Viral diseases; Waterfalls
• ISSN: 1472-6947; 1472-6947
• DOI: 10.1186/s12911-023-02381-3

Given the effective role of a mobile applications in disease management, disease monitoring, and self-care in patients with COVID-19 disease, we aimed to design, development and evaluation of a self-care Mobile app for COVID-19 patients not requiring hospitalization. The design, development and evaluation the usability of the self-care and education mobile app for patients with COVID-19 disease were conducted in two main phases at 2021 in Northwest of IRAN; (1) Determine the features and capabilities and (2) Design, development and evaluation of self-care mobile App. JAVA programming languages and Android Operating System were used and selected to design and development of a mobile app. There were 25 participants who conducted evaluations of the mobile app's usability and impact using the mobile health app usability a Questionnaire of User Interface Satisfaction was administered to assess the usability of the developed application. The results were analyzed via Excel 2013. The model of developing a mobile app as an Information System was the Waterfall model. The smartphone application based on a set of capabilities and features was designed and consists of two main parts: the login screen for user registration, and the main home menu. The user interface includes three main pages or activities; (a) Main Menu for quick access to all of the pages, (b) Symptom management and monitoring to monitor the signs and symptoms during the illness, and (c) Set Reminders and Alarms to notify patients. The users' mean score of the application usability was calculated as 7.91 out of 9 indicating a good level of satisfaction. This app can be a guideline and a useful tools for managing and monitoring symptoms, reminding medications, and implementing self-care instructions in outpatients. The authors suggest evaluating the efficacy and functionality test of mobile-based applications for COVID-19 in clinical trial studies.