GeriatricHelper: iterative development of a mobile application to support geriatric assessment

• Autor(a) principal: Pinto, Rafael Salgueiro Felgueiras
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/24225
• topic: mHealth; Geriatrics; Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment; Android; iOS; User-centred design

Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is a multidisciplinary diagnosis approach that considers several dimensions of fragility in older adults to develop an individualized plan to favour health with aging. CGA is applied using a set of scales for different subareas, including medical, nutritional, psychosocial and functional aspects. Currently, CGA is applied by a limited number of professionals in geriatrics care, using a paper-based approach, with calculations made by hand. Patient follow-up is done by consulting documents from previous appointments. The goal of this work is to develop a mobile application to act as a pocket guide and a tool for the CGA. This technological approach provides an alternative to the current method, reducing time spent on retrieving the scales documentation and the overhead of computing result. GeriatricHelper is an Android mHealth application developed under an iterative, UserCentred Design approach. Feedback from a broad set of users including domain experts has been obtained throughout, contributing to a system with high usability and acceptability. The result is a mobile application that solves the issues currently met by physicians and which is easily adaptable to include new geriatric scales. A functional prototype is currently being tested, allowing for any clinician to apply the otherwise experts-limited geriatric assessment.