Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study
Background Brain in Hand is a smartphone application (app) that allows users to create structured diaries with problems and solutions, attach reminders, record task completion and has a symptom monitoring system. Brain in Hand was designed to support people with psychological problems, and encour...
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| Format: | Article |
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Biomed Central
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52243/ |
| _version_ | 1848798681595117568 |
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| author | Kettlewell, Jade Phillips, Julie Radford, Kathryn A. das Nair, Roshan |
| author_facet | Kettlewell, Jade Phillips, Julie Radford, Kathryn A. das Nair, Roshan |
| author_sort | Kettlewell, Jade |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Background
Brain in Hand is a smartphone application (app) that allows users to create structured diaries with problems and solutions, attach reminders, record task completion and has a symptom monitoring system. Brain in Hand was designed to support people with psychological problems, and encourage behaviour monitoring and change. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of exploring the barriers and enablers for the uptake and use of Brain in Hand in clinical practice, identify potential adaptations of the app for use with people with acquired brain injury (ABI), and determine whether the behaviour change wheel can be used as a model for engagement.
Methods
We identified stakeholders: ABI survivors and carers, National Health Service and private healthcare professionals, and engaged with them via focus groups, conference presentations, small group discussions, and through questionnaires. The results were evaluated using the behaviour change wheel and descriptive statistics of questionnaire responses.
Results
We engaged with 20 ABI survivors, 5 carers, 25 professionals, 41 questionnaires were completed by stakeholders. Comments made during group discussions were supported by questionnaire results. Enablers included smartphone competency (capability), personalisation of app (opportunity), and identifying perceived need (motivation). Barriers included a physical and cognitive inability to use smartphone (capability), potential cost and reliability of technology (opportunity), and no desire to use technology or change from existing strategies (motivation). The stakeholders identified potential uses and changes to the app, which were not easily mapped onto the behaviour change wheel, e.g. monitoring fatigue levels, method of logging task completion, and editing the diary on their smartphone.
Conclusions
The study identified that both ABI survivors and therapists could see a use for Brain in Hand, but wanted users to be able to personalise it themselves to address individual user needs, e.g. monitoring activity levels. The behaviour change wheel is a useful tool when designing and evaluating engagement activities as it addresses most aspects of implementation, however additional categories may be needed to explore the specific features of assistive technology interventions, e.g. technical functions. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:23:38Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-52243 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:23:38Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Biomed Central |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-522432020-05-04T19:38:05Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52243/ Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study Kettlewell, Jade Phillips, Julie Radford, Kathryn A. das Nair, Roshan Background Brain in Hand is a smartphone application (app) that allows users to create structured diaries with problems and solutions, attach reminders, record task completion and has a symptom monitoring system. Brain in Hand was designed to support people with psychological problems, and encourage behaviour monitoring and change. The aim of this paper is to describe the process of exploring the barriers and enablers for the uptake and use of Brain in Hand in clinical practice, identify potential adaptations of the app for use with people with acquired brain injury (ABI), and determine whether the behaviour change wheel can be used as a model for engagement. Methods We identified stakeholders: ABI survivors and carers, National Health Service and private healthcare professionals, and engaged with them via focus groups, conference presentations, small group discussions, and through questionnaires. The results were evaluated using the behaviour change wheel and descriptive statistics of questionnaire responses. Results We engaged with 20 ABI survivors, 5 carers, 25 professionals, 41 questionnaires were completed by stakeholders. Comments made during group discussions were supported by questionnaire results. Enablers included smartphone competency (capability), personalisation of app (opportunity), and identifying perceived need (motivation). Barriers included a physical and cognitive inability to use smartphone (capability), potential cost and reliability of technology (opportunity), and no desire to use technology or change from existing strategies (motivation). The stakeholders identified potential uses and changes to the app, which were not easily mapped onto the behaviour change wheel, e.g. monitoring fatigue levels, method of logging task completion, and editing the diary on their smartphone. Conclusions The study identified that both ABI survivors and therapists could see a use for Brain in Hand, but wanted users to be able to personalise it themselves to address individual user needs, e.g. monitoring activity levels. The behaviour change wheel is a useful tool when designing and evaluating engagement activities as it addresses most aspects of implementation, however additional categories may be needed to explore the specific features of assistive technology interventions, e.g. technical functions. Biomed Central 2018-05-30 Article PeerReviewed Kettlewell, Jade, Phillips, Julie, Radford, Kathryn A. and das Nair, Roshan (2018) Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 18 (1). 33/1-33/13. ISSN 1472-6947 Brain injuries; Technology; Smartphone application; mHealth; Self-monitoring; Engagement study; Behaviour change https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0611-0 doi:10.1186/s12911-018-0611-0 doi:10.1186/s12911-018-0611-0 |
| spellingShingle | Brain injuries; Technology; Smartphone application; mHealth; Self-monitoring; Engagement study; Behaviour change Kettlewell, Jade Phillips, Julie Radford, Kathryn A. das Nair, Roshan Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title | Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title_full | Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title_fullStr | Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title_short | Informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| title_sort | informing evaluation of a smartphone application for people with acquired brain injury: a stakeholder engagement study |
| topic | Brain injuries; Technology; Smartphone application; mHealth; Self-monitoring; Engagement study; Behaviour change |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52243/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52243/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52243/ |