Background Most mobile pharmaceutical applications produced for people with visual disabilities in Thailand fail to meet the required standard due to poor-quality regulations, defective design, lack of user support and impracticality; as a result, visually-impaired people are unable to use them. This research is motivated by the limited use of this technology in primary medical services and its aim is to enable people with disabilities to access effective digital health information. The research objective is to analyse, design and develop a mobile pharmaceutical application with functions that are appropriate for visually-impaired users, and test its usability. Results Based on the design and development of the application, it contained five necessary functions. When testing the usability and users’ satisfaction, it was found that the input or fill of information in the application was of low usability. According to the test results, the medicinal database function was missing 71 times and the voice command function was missing 34 times. Based on users’ satisfaction results, users who had the highest level of usage gave higher average scores to users’ attitude, users’ confidence, user interface and system performance than those with lower levels of usage. The scores of both groups were found to be the same when discussing the implementation of the development. Conclusions This mobile application, which was developed based on the use of smart technology, will play an important role in supporting visually-impaired people in Thailand by enhancing the efficacy of self-care. The design and development of the application will ensure the suitability of many functions for visually-impaired users. However, despite the high functional capacity of the application, the gap in healthcare services between the general public and disabled groups will still exist if users have inadequate IT skills.

Background Women’s mobile health (m-health) applications are currently widely used for health education, medication, prevention of illness, etcetera. However, women are extremely sensitive to their design. While the number of m-health applications for women is increasing, many are of poor quality and have development issues. Objective This paper aims to develop and evaluate an m-health application for Thai women based on a user-centred design (UCD). Current women’s m-health applications were investigated to identify any lack of development in usability, functionality and graphical user interface. The results were evaluated and used to create criteria for the trial of a prototype application. Methods UCD methodology was used to design a graphical user interface, analyse the application’s functionality, and enhance its usability. Data from thirty female end-users were collected and maintained locally, and thirteen information technology (IT) experts provided feedback on the prototype trial. Interviews and questionnaires were used to gather user data and identify problems. Results The average scores of the evaluation by the end-users (n = 30) and IT experts (n = 13) were compared using a t-test statistical analysis. For the first version, the end-users gave higher usability scores (average = 4.440), with no statistical significance and a P value of 0.05. In comparison, lower scores for functionality were given by the IT experts (average = 4.034), with no statistical significance and a P value of 0.05. For the second version, the average scores from the end-users were higher than those from the IT experts. The highest score was related to usability (average = 4.494), with no statistical significance and a P value of 0.05. The lowest score was for the user interface from the group of IT experts (average = 4.084), with no statistical significance and a P value of 0.05. Conclusion A UCD was utilised to construct a process taxonomy to understand, analyse, design and develop an application suitable for Thai women. It was found from an evaluation of the currently-available women’s m-health applications that usability is their main weakness; therefore, this aspect needed to be prioritised in the new design. According to the results, IT experts’ perspective of the development of an m-health application was different from that of end-users. Hence, it was evident that both end-users and IT experts needed to be involved in helping developers to analyse, prioritise and establish a strategy for developing an m-health application, particularly one for women’s health. This would give researchers an in-depth understanding of the end-users’ expectations.

Background The Thai medical application for patient triage, namely Triagist, is an mHealth application designed to support the pre-hospital process. However, since the functions of the application that are necessary for the pre-hospital process have been found not to be fully developed, the addition of a back-end system has been considered to increase its performance and usability. Objective To determine the ability of the previous version to effectively manage the pre-hospital process and analyse the current problems with the pre-hospital operation. Therefore, the new system was developed to support the connection of dispatch centres or operational centres to the Triagist mobile application and system evaluation. Method Design thinking methodology was used to analyse, design and develop a patient triage system to support the pre-hospital process in Thailand based on users’ requirements. 68 active members of the rescue teams and emergency medical staff in Chiang Mai and Lampang provinces were recruited to test the reliability of the system based on a prototype application. Results The new medical mobile application for patient triage in Thailand was validated for use due to containing the two essential functions of Initial Dispatch Code (IDC) geolocation and IDC management. When the system was tested by emergency staff who were responsible for using it, those with the least experience were found to use it better than their highly experienced colleagues. Moreover, in cases where the system had been implemented, it was found to determine the frequency of symptoms, the time period during which cases occurred, and the density of cases in each area. Conclusion This system, which has been developed based on the use of smart technology, will play an important role in supporting emergency services in Thailand by enhancing the efficiency of the pre-hospital process. Emergency centres will receive IDC information from the geolocation system so that they can determine patients’ location without undue delay. Emergency services will be able to rapidly prepare the necessary resources and administrative tasks will be supported by linking the dispatch centre to central rescue teams.

<p class="0abstractCxSpFirst">Since health-related information for pregnant women is extremely complex and sensitive, end-users of any application are required to have the same level of knowledge as the information providers to help them to navigate between various sources of information to ascertain the reliability of contents that are often confusing. However, although there are several such applications for Thai pregnant women in the market, few were developed based on research evidence.</p><p class="0abstractCxSpMiddle"> This study is focused on the design of a health application specifically for Thai pregnant women by extracting the explicit problems of existing applications and providing solutions to them. A design thinking methodology comprised of empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test was used as a guideline to develop a prototype app. IT experts, physical therapists and pregnant women were recruited as participants to address the problem taxonomy and obtain a solution.</p><p class="0abstractCxSpLast">The new application produced in this study with the aim of encouraging pregnant women especially for Thai women to engage in physical activity was based on research, and the input of physical therapists, IT experts and pregnant women users was able to feasibly inform the development of an acceptable and usable mobile health application for pregnant women.</p>

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