Point-of-Care Mobile Application to Guide Health Care Professionals in Conducting Substance Use Screening and Intervention: A Mixed-Methods User Experience Study

Abstract

Mobile devices and health applications (apps), often referred to as mobile health (mHealth) products, are popular for accessing health information and providing a wide range of health services across medical disciplines and treatment settings. 1 mHealth apps can assist with patient management and monitoring, clinical decision support, and information Keywords AbstractBackground Well-documented barriers have limited the widespread, sustained adoption of screening and intervention for substance use problems in health care settings. mHealth applications may address provider-related barriers; however, there is limited research on development and user experience of such applications. Objective This user experience study examines a provider-focused point-of-care app for substance use screening and intervention in health care settings. Method This mixed-methods study included think-aloud tasks, task success ratings, semistructured interviews, and usability questionnaires (e.g., System Usability Scale [SUS]) to examine user experience among 12 health coaches who provide substance use services in emergency department and primary care settings. Results The average rate of successful task completion was 94% and the mean SUS score was 76 out of 100. Qualitative data suggested the app enhanced participants' capability to complete tasks efficiently and effectively. Participants reported being satisfied with the app's features, content, screen layout, and navigation and felt it was easy to learn and could benefit patient interactions. Despite overwhelmingly positive user experience reports, there were some concerns that the app could negatively affect patient interactions due to reductions in eye contact and ability to build rapport. Conclusion Using the "Fit between Individuals, Task, and Technology" framework to guide interpretation, overall results indicate acceptable user experience and usability for this provider-focused point-of-care mobile app for substance use screening and intervention as well as favorable potential for adoption by health care practitioners. Such mobile health technologies may help to address well-known challenges related to implementing substance use services in health care settings.

Acceptability and Usability of a Reward-Based Mobile App for Opioid Treatment Settings: Mixed Methods Pilot Study

“…Participants were also administered the 10-item System Usability Scale (SUS) [14] as a quantitative measure of perceived PROCare usability (scores can range from 0 to 100 with >68 considered above-average). The SUS is a valid and reliable measure commonly used for global assessments of systems usability to evaluate a wide variety of products (mobile apps, software, websites, etc), including studies evaluating patient-and provider-facing mobile apps in addiction treatment settings [15][16][17][18][19]. The SUS can be accessed online [20].…”

Human Factors and Organizational Issues in Health Informatics: Innovations and Opportunities

“…Mobile apps [105,113] [17,29,69,70,81,87,91,99,118,119,126,129,33,130,132,142, 34,36,37,49,50,53,67] [ 10,11,92,96,98,[123][124][125][50][51][52]55,61,66,72,84] [ 13,15,47,54,[56][57][58]63,75,85,108,110,23,[115][116][117]121,122,127,131,[25][26][27]30,35,40,41] Fig. 2 Relative weighting of HF/E outcomes by domain [1].…”

Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment in medical and integrated care settings.

“…Other unique models are being tested, including computerized referral from the ED (Haskins et al, 2017) and primary care-facilitated linkage to web-based SBIRT for patients to access after, rather than during, the medical visit (Anderson et al, 2016;Wallace et al, 2017). Moreover, computer-guided, clinician-facing products have recently been developed to help health care practitioners incorporate SBIRT skills more easily into clinical practice, including mobile device applications and clinician dashboards (Levesque, Umanzor, & de Aguiar, 2018;O'Grady, Kapoor, Gilmer, et al, 2019;Satre, Ly, Wamsley, Curtis, & Satterfield, 2017).…”

“…One important factor is the setting in which SBIRT is being implemented. Research has suggested that the demands of SBIRT programs in ED and primary care settings may differ on the patient as well as the site level (O'Grady, Kapoor, Kwon, et al, 2019). Even less is known about implementation needs in other settings.…”