Understanding Development Methods from Other Industries to Improve the Design of Consumer Health Information Technology

While the use of consumer health information technology (IT) applications is expected to enhance quality of care by more efficiently engaging and empowering patients to participate in their health care, consumers have not adopted these technologies at the rates seen in other industries. One reason may be the lack of tools that take into account the complexity and diversity of personal health information management practices. These practices are impacted by a variety of factors including patient demographics, consumer goals, objectives, and perspectives, and a lack of tools to facilitate activities that individuals wish to accomplish.

This project conducted an environmental scan and grey literature review, and key informant interviews to identify consumer product development practices, guided by a technical expert panel, which may be relevant to the design of consumer health IT. Findings from these activities were used to generate recommendations for designers, developers, and vendors of consumer health IT products.

The environmental scan and grey literature review identified 18 product development methods that were characterized based on seven features: structure; iteration; span of approach; user involvement; design team composition; novelty of product; and virtualizability. Twenty-four successful digital consumer products were also identified and classified into seven classes: communication; eCommerce; information storage, archival, and retrieval; personalized entertainment; gaming; learning applications; and smart phones. The findings from the environmental scan and grey literature review are described in the "Improving Consumer Health IT Application Development: Lessons From Other Industries: Background Report" available at https://digital.ahrq.gov/developmentmethodsbackgroundreport.

The key informant interviews were conducted with nine participants representing successful products from five categories relevant to consumer health IT. These five categories included: monitoring information; communication; logging and recording activities or measures; searching for information and making comparisons; and information storage, archival, and retrieval. Interview results suggest that while there is considerable variety in design methods used for successful IT products, they all have underlying common characteristics representing best practices in design. Interview findings are summarized in the "Improving Consumer Health IT Application Development: Lessons From Other Industries Findings from Key Informant Interviews" report available at https://digital.ahrq.gov/developmentmethodskeyinformantinterviewsreport.

Findings from the environmental scan and grey literature review, along with feedback from technical expert panel members, were used to develop the "Designing Consumer Health IT: A Guide for Developers and Systems Designers" guide. This guide, which is available at: https://digital.ahrq.gov/developmentmethodsguide, presents suggested recommendations for designers and developers of consumer health IT products. Recommendations included are either general guidance for designers and design teams that can be applied to the process of designing and developing a product; or specific to a design phase such as idea generation, identification of end users, testing and commercialization.