Gamified e-Health Solution to Promote Postnatal Care in Morocco

Abstract

The postnatal period is a critical phase in both the lives of the mothers and the newborns. Due to all the inherent changes that occur during this period, quality care is crucial during this period to enhance the wellbeing of the mothers and the newborns. In Morocco, the neglection of postnatal care services are often associated to poor communication, financial difficulties and cultural barriers. Mobile technology constitutes therefore a promising approach to bridge this gap and promote postnatal care. In order to improve the effectiveness of mobile technology, gamification has become a powerful feature to boost motivation and induce fun and interactivity into the mobile solutions’ tasks. Based on a previous review on mobile applications for postnatal care available in app repositories, a set of requirements have been identified to build a comprehensive mobile solution that cater the needs of both the mothers and the newborns. These requirements have, then, been enriched with real needs elicited at maternity Les orangers that belongs to the University Hospital Avicenne of Rabat. Along with the functional and non-functional requirements, gamification aspects have been also analyzed. After the analysis and design phases, a pilot version of the solution called ‘Mamma&Baby’ has been implemented using android framework. ‘Mamma&Baby’ is a mobile solution dedicated to assist new mothers during their postnatal period. As future work, it is expected to fully integrate the gamification elements into the solution and conduct an empirical evaluation of the overall quality and the potential of the solution with real puerperal women.