Converting and expanding mobile support tools for tuberculosis treatment support: Design recommendations from domain and design experts

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) is an urgent global health threat and the world’s deadliest infectious disease despite it being largely curable. A critical challenge is to ensure that patients adhere to the full course of treatment to prevent the continued spread of disease and the development of drug resistant disease. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions hold promise to provide the needed adherence support to improve TB treatment outcomes. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of the TB treatment support tools (TB-TSTs) intervention on treatment outcomes (success, default) and to assess patient and provider perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to TB-TST implementation. METHODS The TB-TSTs study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with two parallel groups in which 400 adult patients newly diagnosed with TB will be randomly assigned to receive usual care or usual care plus TB-TSTs. Intervention group participants will report treatment progress and interact with a treatment supporter using an innovative interactive smartphone App and a paper-based drug metabolite urine test strip engineered for home use. The primary outcome will be treatment success. Secondary outcomes will include treatment default rates, self-reported adherence, technology use, and usability. We will assess patient and provider perceptions of barriers to implementation and synthesize lessons learned. We hypothesize that the TB-TSTs intervention will be more effective because it allows patients and TB supporters to monitor and address issues in real time and provide tailored support. We will share results with stakeholders and policymakers. RESULTS We anticipated the start of enrollment in November 2020, a delayed start due to the COVID-19 pandemic and complete enrollment by approximately July 2022. Data collection and follow-up is expected to be completed six months after the last patient is enrolled. Results from the analyses based on the primary endpoints are expected to be submitted for publication within a year of data collection completion. CONCLUSIONS This RCT will be the first to our knowledge to evaluate a patient centered remote treatment support strategy using a mobile tool and a home-based direct drug metabolite test. The results will provide robust scientific evidence on effectiveness, implementation, and adoption of the mHealth tools. Findings have broader implications not only for TB adherence but also chronic disease management more generally and will improve our understanding of how to support patients facing challenging treatment regimens. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04221789; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04221789

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Decision Support Tools for Green Building: Facilitating Selection Among New Adopters on Public Sector Projects

Journal of Green Building ◽

10.3992/jgb.2.3.153 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 153-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Elizabeth Keysar ◽

Annie R Pearce

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Public Sector ◽

Green Building ◽

Relative Advantage ◽

Research Approach ◽

Decision Support Tools ◽

Environment Design ◽

Tool Selection ◽

Support Design ◽

Support Tools

Green building is becoming more mainstream in the public sector, especially in federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense, in a large part due to federal policies requiring more sustainable outcomes in the design and construction of public sector projects. These policies challenge contracted design professionals by adding new demands to a process already constrained by limited budgets, multiple objectives, and short time frames. The purpose of this research is twofold: (a) to inventory decision support tools available to aid the green design process, and (b) to investigate approaches for organizing these tools to facilitate tool selection and adoption by designers new to green building. The research approach is based on principles of innovation adoption theory, specifically the constructs of relative advantage and trialability of innovations. The 275 design-related tools examined here address the spectrum of green building concepts and represent a range of applicability to different design tasks. The findings of this research indicate that while considerable investment has been made in developing freely available web-based tools to support design, a relatively small number of those tools are immediately applicable to the task of making Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) credit determinations for specific projects. The two characteristics of innovations explored in this research provide a basis for explaining some of the anecdotal observations of tools employed in practice, suggesting a need for further research to confirm and extend the findings.

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A Tool Development Framework to Support Design Thinking for Software Engineering

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTERS & TECHNOLOGY ◽

10.24297/ijct.v21i.8998 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 ◽

pp. 53-62

Author(s):

Ayse Kok Arslan

Keyword(s):

Social Networking Sites ◽

Design Thinking ◽

New Technologies ◽

Strong Support ◽

Tool Development ◽

Support Design ◽

Recovery Processes ◽

Development Framework ◽

Support Tools ◽

Communication Methods

This research aims to create a framework to guide the development of design thinking support tools - that is, tools that enable people to express themselves creatively and develop as creative thinkers. The main goal is to develop advanced software and social networking sites that empower users to not only be productive, but also have new technologies. Potential users of these interfaces include software with other engineers, various scientists, product and image designers, builders, teachers, students and many more. Improved communication methods can enable effective psychological search, improved interaction between groups, and faster recovery processes. These advanced combinations should also provide strong support for hypothesis formation, rapid testing of alternatives, improved visual perception, and better distribution of results.

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Designing a Gamified Adherence System for Tuberculosis Treatment Support in Urban Vietnam

Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences ◽

10.24251/hicss.2021.421 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Nadine Ostern ◽

Guido Perscheid ◽

Jürgen Moormann

Keyword(s):

Tuberculosis Treatment ◽

Treatment Support

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Factors Affecting the Family Burden of the Palliative Family

Indonesian Journal of Global Health Research ◽

10.37287/ijghr.v3i3.545 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 371-378

Author(s):

Candra Hadi Prasetiya ◽

Emilia Puspitasari Sugiyanto ◽

Wijanarko Heru Pramono

Keyword(s):

Phenomenological Study ◽

Economic Status ◽

Family Burden ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Care Givers ◽

Support Tools ◽

The Family ◽

Treatment Support ◽

Palliative Patient ◽

Palliative Patients

The process of palliative patient care indirectly causes a burden on the family. This study aims to determine the description of the family burden in caring for palliative patients. This study is a qualitative research with a phenomenological study design. Participant criteria are families who care for patients for at least 6 months. The number of respondents in this study were 4 respondents as care givers of palliative patients. The research method using the analysis method used includes categorizing themes, compiling sub-categorization of themes and the last is the coding process. The results of the study showed that there was a description of the family burden of palliative patients and a description of the factors that influenced palliative patients including economic status, patient complaints, family support, family perception, availability of treatment support tools, and the ability of families to manage family burdens. The burden on the family can be reduced by training the family to manage the existing factors.

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