Usability evaluation of the Agente Escuta application: translational research.
Alice Andrade Lopes Amorim, Kátia de Freitas Alvarenga, Lilian Cássia Bórnia Jacob and 1 others
PMID 37729328WHAT IT FOUND
Community health workers rated the Agente Escuta app as having good usability, though they scored it lower than expert judges.
The app effectively supported hearing monitoring tasks, but technical barriers and work overload limited its routine use.
Key findings
01Community health workers rated the app's usability as good, with an average score above the standard cutoff for acceptable use.
02Expert judges rated the app significantly higher than the community health workers who were the intended end-users.
03Very few community health workers actually used the app in their daily work routine, limiting evidence on its real-world impact.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only three CHWs used the app effectively in their routine for the required three months, so the study cannot generalize about the app's impact on actual clinical workflow. The study period coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which redirected CHWs' work to pandemic response, potentially reducing their time and motivation to use the app. CHWs reported basic technical difficulties with mobile apps, such as password management and finding the app, which may have affected their usability scores.
Declared interests
The study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) - Brazil.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the app is ready for widespread clinical implementation based on the high expert scores. The intended users (CHWs) rated it significantly lower, and very few were able to use it in their daily routine, meaning its effectiveness in real-world hearing monitoring is not yet proven.