Diego Fernando Ramos
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Camila Duarte Nascimento
Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil
ABSTRACT
Patient engagement, also known as patient and public involvement, patient involvement, or stakeholder engagement, is a type of participatory action research in which patients and carers "coproduce" the research. It has been described as the development of significant and ongoing partnerships in research governance, priority setting, conduct, and information transmission between researchers and patients (including unpaid carers). One of the contending theories explaining patients' relatively poor acceptance of mHealth is because end users' perspectives were neglected during the development process. Thus, one of the most important steps towards the broader acceptance of patients and carers as coproducers of mHealth research is to facilitate a better understanding of the protocols for involving them in these studies. Our findings demonstrate that including patients and carers in research through the establishment of an advisory panel yields a valuable information source that could guide the development of a mobile health app during the period preceding heart surgery. In addition to seven key design-specific messages about access, tracking, synchronisation, and reminders, members of the advisory panel produced sixteen key content-specific messages about medical terms, professional roles, cardiac surgery procedures and recovery, travel, nutrition, medications, resources, and physical activity. These findings are unusual since patient engagement is still underutilized in several health research domains, including as cardiac surgery and Health design, despite the growing understanding of the value of involving patients in research.
Keywords: Mobile Health Applications (MHP), Enhancing Pathology services (EPS), Patient Engagement Tools (PET).
