Design of a Consumer Mobile Health App for Heart Failure: Findings From the Nurse-Led Co-Design of Care4myHeart.
Leanna Woods, Jed Duff, Erin Roehrer and 2 others
PMID 34345774WHAT IT FOUND
The Care4myHeart heart failure app was co-designed with patients, family caregivers and clinicians.
It covers medication, weight, fluid, blood pressure, exercise, documents and advance-care planning, but the paper does not show it improves outcomes.
Key findings
01The final app has three sections: home screen, health management, and My Plan, with a favorites option for chosen self-management components.
02Health management includes appointment reminders, document storage and a list of emergency and health care team contacts.
03The paper reports the app's features and the rationale for them, drawn from the co-design process.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The app was not tested for effectiveness in this paper; it reports design features and stakeholder rationale. Participants were self-selected volunteers from the local cardiac service, so their views may not represent other patients, caregivers or settings. The workshop subset was 11 people, including 7 clinicians, 3 patients and 1 family caregiver, and the authors note few patients attended the workshops. The design lead had limited design experience and learned co-design processes as the project developed. The design is tied to local Australian policies, hospital checklists and a hospital website, so it may not fit other health systems without adaptation. Ethical approval and recruitment required adequate literacy and confidence to engage with stakeholders, which may have excluded some patients and caregivers.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the app's evidence-based design as proof that it improves heart failure outcomes. The paper reports co-design features and stakeholder rationale, not a trial or patient outcome results.