Involving patients in research is essential to maximize the impact of research studies results. This is even truer if the research is aimed at developing mHealth applications like myAirCoach, where there is a high risk of developing tools with limited real-world use.
This was the theme of Courtney Coleman’s speech at the first EASYM conference on Friday 28th October in Berlin, during the session Doctor and Patient involvement in the era of personalised medicine. Courtney explained how patients are contributing to the development of myAirCoach and the role of the Advisory Patient Forum, which is now going through crucial steps for reviewing the functionalities and the usability of the system.
myAirCoach is built with a user-centred design approach: focus groups and surveys with people with asthma were conducted to assess their needs and preferences. Moreover, people with asthma co-designed the tools used during the study (ie study protocol, topic guides, participant communication and consent form), to make sure that the identified questions were right and none of the key issues relevant to patients were overlooked.
Now we are entering the most important phase of the project, with a test campaign about to start to define the final myAirCoach device, and the contribution to the patients will be more and more important.
Follow the latest development of myAirCoach project through the website and twitter!
To know more about the conference, please visit EASyM website.