Sarah Cook, BreathEasy Survey Methodologist, and Rita Sembajwe, BreathEasy Project Manager, RTI International
To gather user requirements for our smartphone application for asthma and depression/anxiety patients and clinicians, we conducted focus groups with potential users. For each of the two patient groups, we recruited participants who have comorbid asthma and depression or anxiety. Clinicians in the provider focus group were identified by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) staff as clinicians who treat patients with comorbid asthma and depression or anxiety.
Once discussions in the patient focus groups began, we learned a lot about our target population’s level of interest. Patients in the focus groups were very enthusiastic about using a smartphone application to track observations of daily living (ODLs) associated with asthma and depression or anxiety. In fact, patients were so excited about the idea of the application that they continued to identify and add more and more ODLs they wanted to track
We observed that these patient groups interpreted some of the questions differently than we had intended. Originally, we primarily intended to track asthma-related ODLs; depression- or anxiety-related issues were considered to be secondary. However, when asked asthma-related questions (e.g., type and amount of daily activity), patients seemed to respond in the context of their mental health statuses. Instead of reporting limited activity due to respiratory problems, patients in both groups discussed how activity may be restricted by a lack of will related to their emotional difficulties. These results require us to take another look at the focus of our application in order to find ways to adapt to patients’ interpretations or help patients adapt to our interpretations.
The clinician focus groups revealed valuable information about how collected ODLs might be used. We asked the clinician focus group to evaluate and improve upon mock-ups of the BreathEasy dashboard that would be used to view patients’ ODL data. Clinicians were very realistic about the data-entry burden that could result from this type of data, as well as how it would affect clinic workflow. They agreed, however, that having the option to select what data to view at a particular time would be useful, assuming that patients kept up with the data entry. Comments from the provider focus group gave us valuable insight into how these data would be used and which ODLs might end up being superfluous. Stay tuned to find out more about the implications these results will have on our preliminary smartphone and dashboard application designs!
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