A mHealth application for chronic wound care: findings of a user trial.

This paper reports on the findings of a user trial of a mHealth application for pressure ulcer (bedsore) documentation. Pressure ulcers are a leading iatrogenic cause of death in developed countries and significantly impact quality of life for those affected. Pressure ulcers will be an increasing public health concern as the population ages. Electronic information systems are being explored to improve consistency and accuracy of documentation, improve patient and caregiver experience and ultimately improve patient outcomes. A software application was developed for Android Smartphones and tablets and was trialed in a personal care home in Western Canada. The software application provides an electronic medical record for chronic wounds, replacing nurses' paper-based charting and is positioned for integration with facility's larger eHealth framework. The mHealth application offers three intended benefits over paper-based charting of chronic wounds, including: (1) the capacity for remote consultation (telehealth between facilities, practitioners, and/or remote communities), (2) data organization and analysis, including built-in alerts, automatically-generated text-based and graph-based wound histories including wound images, and (3) tutorial support for non-specialized caregivers. The user trial yielded insights regarding the software application's design and functionality in the clinical setting, and highlighted the key role of wound photographs in enhancing patient and caregiver experiences, enhancing communication between multiple healthcare professionals, and leveraging the software's telehealth capacities.

This questionnaire asks about your experiences in using the wound care software application on the Smartphone or Tablet device over the past few weeks. Your feedback will be used to further improve and finetune the software application's design and functionality. Please note the following: • Your anonymity is protected. The survey does not ask you for any identifying information, and I request that you do not include any identifying information in your freeform comments. As well, Surveymonkey has been set to not capture your computer's IP address.
• Your confidentiality is protected. As the results are presented to the group during the upcoming focus group to which you are invited, the results will be presented in summary form only. Any presentations or publications arising from this work will likewise only present the results in summary form.
• Your feedback is welcome. A summary of the results will be made available to you via email. To further protect anonymity and confidentiality, you do not need to opt in to receive the results. You wll receive them automatically.
• This survey should take you approximately 20 minutes to complete.
Thank you in advance for your time! 1. The first two questions ask you about your nursing profile.
Years of bedside nursing experience: 2. Years of experience in personal care home nursing: 3. Your age:   7. The next three questions ask you about the content of the software application, in terms of how well the software application matches the Braden Scale for risk assessment, the PUSH tool, and the BatesJensen tool (paper forms) for charting of wounds and wound care. (Enter N/A if you did not use a particular form).
8. Which aspects of the Braden Scale, PUSH tool, and BatesJensen tool have been missed or overlooked on the software application? (Enter N/A if you did not use a particular form). n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j  12. The software application only presents the screens that are relevant to a particular resident or patient, based on how you respond to each prior screen. Therefore, screen that are not applicable to your resident are not shown to you. We call this 'intuitive guidance' within the software application. Please rate the following: 13. The software application uses Likerttype scales (rating scales, e.g. 1 to 5) wherever possible for consistent data entry. We have minimized the opportunity for freelance notes, since different healthcare providers may use different wording to describe the same wound conditions.
14. The color used to indicate wound severity: n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j

Other comments
Other comments 15. The software application comes with two built in alerts / notifications. The first one is a notification when a wound assessment is past due, and the second one is a notification when a wound's latest assessment indicates deterioration relative to the previous assessment. These alerts / notifications are shown when you log in to the application. (Please enter N/A if no alerts / notifications were present over the time that you used the software application). 18. This question asks you about taking photos (images) of the wound: 19. In addition to (or instead of) the current options for a textbased history and a graph based history, the following display options or modifications would help me to better understand a patient's / resident's wound and wound care status:  n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j n m l k j

Other comments
If the photos were not helpful, why not? 20. Please tell us any other impressions or experiences positive or negative with the software application that we didn't otherwise cover in this survey. Also, the focus group will be a chance to see a summary of these survey results, and to discuss the experience in person.
Thank you for completing the survey! 5 5 6 6