Updating Bem-me-ker : an user-centred approach to redesigning an onboarding application for cancer patients

Abstract

This paper presents the research and development of a redesign of Bem-me-ker – an application of the Portuguese Oncology Institute (IPO) of Porto. For this project, we resorted to a user-centric methodology featuring a survey of the current market and the context of the digital health industry, interviews and usability tests with patients, caregivers and stakeholders. Such user-centric methodology proved to be efficient in responding to their needs, with satisfactory results. Its contributions are focused on the incorporation of the concept of patient navigation into the design of an onboarding application, transforming it into a virtual manager of the disease for cancer patients, and with the ultimate goal to improve their wellbeing and quality-of-life. We see that this approach is also capable of being adjusted to the needs of other institutions and patients, thus contributing to the improvement of the national health service, providing digitally optimized information to citizens. Keywords: eHealth, mHealth, interaction design, cancer, onboarding, chatbot

This paper presents the research and development of a redesign of Bem-me-ker – an application of the Portuguese Oncology Institute (IPO) of Porto. For this project, we resorted to an user-centered methodology featuring a survey of the current market and the context of the digital health industry, interviews and usability tests with patients, caregivers and IPO stakeholders. Such user-centered methodology proved to be efficient in responding to their needs, with satisfactory results. Its contributions are focused on the incorporation of the concept of patient navigation into the design of an onboarding application, transforming it into a virtual manager of the disease for cancer patients, and with the ultimate goal to improve their wellbeing and quality-of-life. We see that this approach is also capable of being adjusted to the needs of other institutions and patients, thus contributing to the improvement of the national health service, providing digitally optimized information to citizens.