scholarly journals Evaluating Human-Centred Design for Public Health A Case Study on Developing a Healthcare App with Refugee Communities.

Author(s):  
Rebeccah Bartlett ◽  
Jacqueline Boyle ◽  
Jessica Simons Smith ◽  
Nadia Khan ◽  
Tracy Robinson ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Australian women from migrant and refugee communities experience reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. Human-centred design is an ethical and effective approach to developing health solutions with underserved populations that are more likely to experience significant disadvantage or social marginalisation. This study aimed to evaluate how well Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit, applied human-centred design when developing a web-based application that delivers local, evidence-based and culturally relevant health information to its non-English speaking users. Methods: This study undertook a document review, survey and semi-structured interviews to evaluate how well Shifra was able to achieve its objectives using a human-centred design approach. Results: A co-design process successfully led to the development of a web-based health app for refugee and migrant women. This evaluation also yielded several important recommendations for improving Shifra’s human-centred design approach moving forward. Conclusions: Improving refugees’ access to sexual and reproductive health is complex and requires innovative and thoughtful problem solving. This evaluation of Shifra’s human-centred design approach provides a helpful and rigorous guide in reporting that may encourage other organisations undertaking human-centred design work to evaluate their own implementation. Keywords: human-centred design; design thinking; refugee health; evaluation Plain language summary: Australian women from non-English speaking migrant and refugee communities face reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and many then go on to experience poor health outcomes as a result. There is an urgent need for new approach to improve access to healthcare for underserved communities, one that centres these women in the process of finding, developing and disseminating the solutions themselves. Human-centred design is an ethical and effective methodology to working with communities to develop these health solutions. This study aimed to evaluate how well Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit focused on improving access to healthcare for refugees and new migrants, undertook human-centred design approach when developing a Smartphone app that deliver local, safe and culturally relevant health information to non-English speaking Australians. The authors interviewed refugees, health and social sector experts and computer programmers involved in creating Shifra to evaluate how well they used human-centred design to achieve its goals. This evaluation found that Shifra’s approach was successful whilst also highlighting several important recommendations for improving collaborative efforts with refugee communities. These findings could help other projects also seeking to undertake an authentic community co-design process.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebeccah Bartlett ◽  
Jacqueline A. Boyle ◽  
Jessica Simons Smith ◽  
Nadia Khan ◽  
Tracy Robinson ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Australian women from migrant and refugee communities experience reduced access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. Human-centred design can be a more ethical and effective approach to developing health solutions with underserved populations that are more likely to experience significant disadvantage or social marginalisation. This study aimed to evaluate how well Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit, applied human-centred design when developing a web-based application that delivers local, evidence-based and culturally relevant health information to its non-English speaking users. Methods This study undertook a document review, survey, and semi-structured interviews to evaluate how well Shifra was able to achieve its objectives using a human-centred design approach. Results A co-design process successfully led to the development of a web-based health app for refugee and migrant women. This evaluation also yielded several important recommendations for improving Shifra’s human-centred design approach moving forward. Conclusions Improving refugees’ access to sexual and reproductive health is complex and requires innovative and thoughtful problem solving. This evaluation of Shifra’s human-centred design approach provides a helpful and rigorous guide in reporting that may encourage other organisations undertaking human-centred design work to evaluate their own implementation.


Author(s):  
Larry Svenson

BackgroundThe Province of Alberta, Canada, maintains a mature data environment with linkable administrative and clinical data dating back up to 30 years. Alberta has a single payer, publicly funded and administered, universal health system, which maintains multiple administrative data sets. Main AimThe main aim of the strategy is to fully maximize the data assets in the province to drive health system health system innovation, with a focus on improving health outcomes and quality of life. Methods/ApproachThe Alberta Ministry of Health has created the Secondary Use Data Access (SUDA) initiative to leverage its administrative health data. SUDA envisions strengthening partnerships between the public and private sectors through two main data access approaches. The first is direct access to de-identified data held within the Alberta Health data warehouse by key health system stakeholders (e.g. academic institutions, professional associations, regulatory colleges). The second is indirect access to private and not-for-profit organizations, using a data access safe haven (DASH) approach. Indirect access is achieved through private sector investments to a trusted third party that hires analysts placed within the Ministry of Health offices. ResultsStaffing agreements and privacy impact assessments are in place. Indirect access includes a multiple stakeholder steering committee to vet and prioritize projects. Private and not-for-profit stakeholders do not have access to raw data, but rather receive access to aggregated data and statistical models. All data disclosures are done by Ministry staff to ensure compliance with Alberta's Health Information Act. Direct access has been established for one professional organization and one academic institution, with access restricted to de-identified data. ConclusionThe Secondary Use Data Access initiative uses a safe haven approach to leveraging data to provide a more secure approach to data access. It reduces the need to provision data outside of the data warehouse while improving timely access to data. The approach provides assurances that people's health information is held secure, while also being used to create health system improvements.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebeccah Bartlett

BACKGROUND Australian women from migrant and refugee communities report less sexual and reproductive health (SRH) awareness. They experience reduced access to SRH-specific care as well as culturally-relevant support that could assist them to make evidence-based decisions about their own health and service utilisation. Addressing public health problems through human-centred design (HCD) is an ethical and effective approach to developing solutions with underserved populations that are more likely to experience significant disadvantage or social marginalisation. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the HCD approach that Shifra, a small Australian-based not-for-profit focused on improving access to healthcare for refugees and new migrants, undertook in developing a web-based application to deliver local, evidence-based and culturally relevant SRH information to its users. The evaluation focused on the following three questions: 1. To what extent did Shifra complete all the steps of the design thinking process shown? 2. To what extent did the final Shifra app incorporate the contributions of all co-designers? 3. To what extent were the co-designers satisfied with the process? METHODS The primary data for the first question involved a thorough review of all of Shifra’s organisational documents. Since there is a notable lack of validated tools evaluate HCD projects a maturity rubric was designed to synthesise the findings from the document review. This rubric was developed through consultation and several iterations of feedback from the expert panel were used to improve the usability, completeness and level of detail of the rubric. RESULTS A co-design process was successfully applied to the development of a web-based app for refugee and migrant women in reproductive health. This evaluation also yielded several important recommendations for improving Shifra’s HCD approach moving forward, findings that can be applied to other projects seeking to undertake an authentic community co-design process. First, with so many people of diverse backgrounds contributing to the project, clear communication about roles and expectations is critical. Second, it is important to set realistic expectations and role clarifications with co-designers. Third, it is important not to view all end users as interchangeable. Finally, by setting aside adequate time to develop collaborative relationships amongst all co-design groups the HCD process is an opportunity to give power and control back to the end user population for whom one is designing the health intervention. CONCLUSIONS Improving refugees’ access to SRH is complex and multidimensional and requires innovative and thoughtful problem solving. HCD is one way to address complex problems in an ethical and effective way and it is how Shifra chose to approach the development of its solution to this problem. This evaluation of Shifra’s HCD approach provides a helpful and rigorous guide in reporting that may encourage other organisations undertaking HCD work to evaluate their own implementation. CLINICALTRIAL N/A


Author(s):  
Nilmini Wickramasinghe ◽  
Steve Goldberg

In today's cost challenged healthcare environment accountable care and evidence-based decision making have become important considerations. Contemporaneous to this is the fact that the superior management of diabetes has become a global priority especially given the exponential increase in the number of diabetes patients as well as the financial implications of treating this silent epidemic. Thus, this research focuses on trying to address these respective yet critical issues by examining the possibility of using a mobile web-based reporting system that taps into existing widely available resources to monitor and manage gestational diabetes. To test this solution, we adopted a randomized control trial with two-arm cross over applied to a not-for profit hospital in Victoria, Australia. From the perspective of practice, we have uncovered far reaching implications for hospital management's cost vs. quality care to patients. In particular, it appears that the adoption of smartphones to support many aspects of care and patient-clinician interactions is prudent.


2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 683-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Ashton Morgan ◽  
Gregory S. Martin ◽  
William L. Huth

A web-based contingent behavior analysis was developed to quantify the effect of both negative and positive information treatments and post harvest processes on demand for oysters. Results from a panel model indicate that consumers of raw and cooked oysters behave differently after news of an oyster-related human mortality. While cooked oyster consumers take precautionary measures against risk, raw oyster consumers exhibit optimistic bias and increase their consumption level. Further, by varying the source of a counter-information treatment, we find that source credibility impacts behavior. Oyster consumers, and in particular, raw oyster consumers, are most responsive to information provided by a not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization. Finally, post harvest processing of oysters has no impact on demand.


Author(s):  
Antoine Millet ◽  
Audrey Abi Akle ◽  
Dimitri Masson ◽  
Jérémy Legardeur

AbstractProduct success depends on its capacity to meet users’ expectations. Human Centred Design approach helps to reach this success by focussing on users’ needs in the design process. These needs are as well functional as hedonic. Designing products requires then to design hedonic properties affecting users’ perception. For sport products, people wants to improve their performances while maintaining their health. Sport products are then considered not only “sporty” but also “healthy”. Thus, integrating both health and sport expectations into the design process are necessary.Last decades, Affective Engineering was developed to integrate perception into the design process. Applying this approach for sport products may allow defining and mixing sport and health perceptual characteristics all along the design process. However, defining these characterisitics into requirements implies to translate them into semantic terms. If we observe semantic descriptors for sport products and for health products, they seem opposite. In this paper, we aim defining a semantic space representative and respectful of both domains, sport and health, while they oppose.


Author(s):  
Craig Van Slyke ◽  
France Belanger ◽  
Marcy Kittner

With the advent of Web-based electronic commerce (e-commerce), businesses of all sizes rushed to take advantage of the potential of e-commerce technologies. While large organizations often have ready access to the resources necessary to implement ecommerce strategies, smaller organizations may lack some or all of these resources. Conversely, the increased reach facilitated by e-commerce may allow some small businesses to be viable in areas where limited access to customers might otherwise prevent success. This increased reach may be particularly beneficial in economically depressed rural areas, which may stand to gain greatly from the economic development potential of small businesses. Small businesses in general, and rural small businesses in particular, face a number of hurdles that must be overcome if they are to benefit from e-commerce. This case describes how a not-for-profit agency, the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet), facilitates the use of e-commerce by rural small businesses as a part of an overall strategy for spurring economic development through small businesses. ACEnet provides a number of resources that help small businesses take advantage of e-commerce, including computer labs, Web site hosting, consultative services, and technical and business training. This case illustrates how these services help rural small businesses overcome many of the barriers to successful implementation of e-commerce.


Author(s):  
Craig Van Slyke ◽  
Frank Belanger ◽  
Marcy Kittner

With the advent of Web-based electronic commerce (e-commerce), businesses of all sizes rushed to take advantage of the potential of e-commerce technologies. While large organizations often have ready access to the resources necessary to implement e-commerce strategies, smaller organizations may lack some or all of these resources. Conversely, the increased reach facilitated by e-commerce may allow some small businesses to be viable in areas where limited access to customers might otherwise prevent success. This increased reach may be particularly beneficial in economically depressed rural areas, which may stand to gain greatly from the economic development potential of small businesses. Small businesses in general, and rural small businesses in particular, face a number of hurdles that must be overcome if they are to benefit from e-commerce. This case describes how a not-for-profit agency, the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet), facilitates the use of e-commerce by rural small businesses as a part of an overall strategy for spurring economic development through small businesses. ACEnet provides a number of resources that help small businesses take advantage of e-commerce, including computer labs, Web site hosting, consultative services, and technical and business training. This case illustrates how these services help rural small businesses overcome many of the barriers to successful implementation of e-commerce.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402110628
Author(s):  
Vien Chu ◽  
Belinda Luke

This study develops a comprehensive but practical framework for not-for-profit organization (NPO) web-based accountability involving (a) disclosure of operations, financial performance, and social performance, and (b) dialogue; and investigates it in the practices of five Australian NPO award finalists and 160 NPOs more broadly. The findings highlight NPOs’ web-based accountability focused on operational disclosure, promoting NPOs’ activities and mission. However, financial and social performance disclosure was lacking, despite financial performance information being publicly available on the government regulator’s website. Furthermore, the use of online platforms to promote dialogue and exchange was limited. The study suggests that regulatory requirements play an important role in strengthening NPOs’ accountability, and the lack of social performance reporting means it is still unclear what “good things” NPOs are doing.


Author(s):  
Ammer Harb

Human Centred Design is a significant approach in design. It increases the value of design as well as helping businesses to overcome the challenges of not meeting user needs. However, the abundance of Human Centred Design tools and the difficulty to discriminate between them have created the urge to develop selection framework for these tools in regard to the design process. In this paper, I present a framework to assist in selecting Human Centred Design tools. I highlight the significance of the Human Centred Design approach. I also explain the theoretical background behind creating the framework. Then I describe the participatory design workshop method I used to support and validate the results of the theoretical background in order to further develop the selection framework. This framework can be adopted in the design field in order to facilitate the process and to support practitioners’ decisions to select suitable tools.


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