mHealth App to Facilitate Remote Care for Patients With COVID-19: Rapid Development of the DrCovid+ App

Abstract

Background The 2019 novel COVID-19 has severely burdened the health care system through its rapid transmission. Mobile health (mHealth) is a viable solution to facilitate remote monitoring and continuity of care for patients with COVID-19 in a home environment. However, the conceptualization and development of mHealth apps are often time and labor-intensive and are laden with concerns relating to data security and privacy. Implementing mHealth apps is also a challenging feat as language-related barriers limit adoption, whereas its perceived lack of benefits affects sustained use. The rapid development of an mHealth app that is cost-effective, secure, and user-friendly will be a timely enabler. Objective This project aimed to develop an mHealth app, DrCovid+, to facilitate remote monitoring and continuity of care for patients with COVID-19 by using the rapid development approach. It also aimed to address the challenges of mHealth app adoption and sustained use. Methods The Rapid Application Development approach was adopted. Stakeholders including decision makers, physicians, nurses, health care administrators, and research engineers were engaged. The process began with requirements gathering to define and finalize the project scope, followed by an iterative process of developing a working prototype, conducting User Acceptance Tests, and improving the prototype before implementation. Co-designing principles were applied to ensure equal collaborative efforts and collective agreement among stakeholders. Results DrCovid+ was developed on Telegram Messenger and hosted on a cloud server. It features a secure patient enrollment and data interface, a multilingual communication channel, and both automatic and personalized push messaging. A back-end dashboard was also developed to collect patients’ vital signs for remote monitoring and continuity of care. To date, 400 patients have been enrolled into the system, amounting to 2822 hospital bed–days saved. Conclusions The rapid development and implementation of DrCovid+ allowed for timely clinical care management for patients with COVID-19. It facilitated early patient hospital discharge and continuity of care while addressing issues relating to data security and labor-, time-, and cost-effectiveness. The use case for DrCovid+ may be extended to other medical conditions to advance patient care and empowerment within the community, thereby meeting existing and rising population health challenges.

Nurses’ Roles in mHealth App Development: Scoping Review

“…The characteristics of the included studies are summarized in Table 1 . Of the 157 included publications, 132 (84.1%) either described usability testing or were original research papers [ 32 - 49 , 51 , 52 , 55 , 56 , 58 - 65 , 67 - 75 , 77 - 81 , 83 , 85 - 87 , 89 - 107 , 110 , 112 - 117 , 119 - 124 , 126 , 129 , 130 , 132 - 134 , 136 , 138 , 140 - 145 , 147 - 160 , 162 - 169 , 171 - 173 , 175 - 187 ].…”

“…Nurses most frequently assumed the role of evaluator, with 123 (78.3%) of 157 publications indicating that nurses took on this role in at least 1 phase [ 32 - 37 , 39 - 49 , 51 - 53 , 55 , 56 , 58 , 60 - 65 , 67 , 68 , 70 , 72 - 75 , 77 , 79 , 80 , 82 - 88 , 90 - 94 , 96 - 107 , 110 - 123 , 127 - 131 , 133 - 135 , 138 - 143 , 145 - 152 , 155 , 157 - 160 , 162 , 164 , 165 , 167 - 169 , 171 , 172 , 175 - 180 , 182 - 186 ].…”

An mHealth Application in German Health Care System: Importance of User Participation in the Development Process

“…In addition, the costs and benefits must always be weighed up during the development. Users do not have to take this into account [ 46 ]. This can lead to problems, especially for such a project with a limited budget in a scientific context.…”

Associations between perceived usefulness and willingness to use smart healthcare devices among Chinese older adults: The multiple mediating effect of technology interactivity and technology anxiety

“…For instance, Singapore's “Dr Covid + ” App reduces the risk of privacy breaches and data linkage by using Telegram IDs for patient-care communication and patient health tracking instead of saving mobile numbers linked to electronic medical records. 6 Additionally, companies and developers of intelligent health equipment should focus on meeting the actual needs of elderly users, enhancing the age-oriented design of intelligent health devices and products, reducing the learning costs and barriers to utilization for the elderly, and improving the user experience and comfort of the human–computer interaction. Effective marketing and promotion strategies should also be implemented to motivate older adults to continue using smart healthcare devices.…”

“… 3 , 4 In particular, health monitoring devices based on mobile and wearable technologies, such as smart hand badges, smart watches, and smart badges, can be worn by older persons for monitoring their physical health and activity data in real time and providing communication functions, which can be helpful in the early detection and intervention of certain health issues that are commonly found in older persons, such as deterioration of physical functions, chronic diseases, and psycho-emotional problems. 5 – 7 Smart healthcare devices can gather substantial active or passive generation of patient-generated health data (PGHD). 8 These data encompass information like subjective self-reports of physical and mental health status, including anxiety, depression, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), self-rated health (SRH), chronic diseases, and activities of daily living (ADLs), by the device users and diagnostic records by healthcare providers, as well as information from the objective behaviors and body metrics from the passive monitoring of smart devices (e.g., smartphones, remote health monitoring devices, etc.)…”