Integrating cooperative users to develop framework for an effective mobile physiotherapy

Abstract

M-Health applications (apps) have recently attracted much attention from both manufacturing and research communities. Currently, the rapid evolution of the smartphone, which has been aided by advanced communications technology, presents challenges in term of reliability and accurate apps. An awareness of these challenges could help industries and designers to develop better tools to support either patients or users in order to get effective apps. The aim of the study is to identify the critical features, contents and essential users` group for a salient mobile physiotherapy framework. Accordingly, this study reviews 80 papers with more than 100 apps regarding m-health to gain a deeper understanding of the critical content requirements for future improvements to m-health apps features. Four prominent characteristics of the most important features emerged: 1) Reminder, 2) Monitoring program, 3) Training program, 4) Community network features. These features were then incorporated into the design of a mobile physiotherapy framework. Followed by qualitative methods such as, interviews, observation and examination of archival documents the above four features are adopted in order to validate the preliminary framework. Indeed, the aim of this research is that mobile health technology adoption will increase in the near future through improvements to patient engagement. The researcher believes that by understanding m-Health apps critical content requirements and its classification, a new solution may reveal itself, with the potential to overcome the present challenges in mobile physiotherapy.