Designing an IT Ecosystem for Pregnancy Care Management Based on Pervasive Technologies

Abstract

Pregnancy care is a topic of interest for both academia and practitioners. Novel pervasive technologies and applications, such as mobile technologies, wearables and IoT, open a wide corpus of possibilities for fostering pregnancy care management, and reducing risks and problems, improving communication among stakeholders and society development. This article introduces a model of a pregnancy care IT ecosystem based on the integration of various services in a semantically enriched e-health ecosystem. As proof of concept, both the web and mobile applications that aim to help pregnant women and gynaecologists were designed and employed in a real environment. An evaluation of the developed ecosystem was performed on a sample of 500 pregnant women and 100 doctors. After pilot usage, a survey was used to collect the data from participants, and assess the acceptance of the developed system. Results show that quality, usability and usefulness are on a high level, and that both pregnant women and doctors are ready for more extensive use of the system. In addition, research findings imply that employing pervasive technologies could bring significant benefits to all the parties in pregnancy care systems.

How Wearable Sensors Can Support the Research on Foetal and Pregnancy Outcomes: A Scoping Review

“…The majority of mHealth apps reported in the selected studies were based on the so-called ecological momentary assessment approach [ 26 , 31 ], which allowed researchers to collect information about behaviours in real-time and in the real-world [ 44 , 45 ]. The use of data from social media, internet activities, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and specific surveys may also provide pertinent digital information to be considered [ 7 , 8 , 42 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. Our scoping review also raised social and cultural issues, including concerns over data security and privacy, as well as fears about technology being intimately connected to the body.…”

Developing and testing an integrated patient mHealth and provider dashboard application system for type 2 diabetes management among Medicaid-enrolled pregnant individuals based on a user-centered approach: Mixed-methods study

“… 24 Pervasive technology such as mHealth and Internet of Things wearables present several opportunities for fostering pregnancy care management. 25 Nearly 75% of pregnant individuals reported downloading at least one mHealth app, and a majority of them indicated that they are likely to use them once per week. 26 , 27 Over 90% of women of reproductive age are smartphone users, including those on Medicaid.…”

What do hospital-based health professionals need and expect from an mHealth app to support the first 1000 days of life? Results from a cross sectional study

“…For this reason, we felt it was essential to begin conducting rigorous studies aimed at designing (or co-designing with end-users), implementing, and subsequently evaluating telehealth interventions in this healthcare area [17][18][19]. Indeed, many available apps have been found to be unable to meet the needs and expectations of primary users and health professionals (i.e., secondary users) in terms of content validity [20,21], functionalities, and technical features [21,22]. Finally, most apps do not consider the continuum between pregnancy, birth, and postpartum and ultimately neglect the collective impact of the first 1000 days of life on women's and children's health [19,21,23].…”