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  • Development of an mHealth Platform for Adolescent Obesity Prevention: User-Centered Design Approach
    Publication . Reis, Catarina I.; Pernencar, Cláudia; Carvalho, Marta; Gaspar, Pedro; Martinho, Ricardo; Frontini, Roberta; Alves, Rodrigo; Sousa, Pedro
    Obesity is a chronic condition that influences the quality of life of patients and families while increasing the economic burden for the world population. Multidisciplinary prevention programs are crucial to address it, allowing an early introduction of healthy behaviors into daily habits. Mobile health interventions provide adequate support for these programs, especially considering the gamification techniques used to promote users’ engagement. TeenPower is a multidisciplinary mHealth intervention program conducted in Portugal during 2018 to empower adolescents, promoting healthy behaviors while preventing obesity. An agile software development process was applied to the development of the digital platform that holds a web-based application and a mobile application. We also propose a model for future developments based on the user-centered design approach adopted for this development and the assessment conducted in each phase. The user-centered design approach model proposed has three distinct phases: (1) design study; (2) pre-production usability tests; and (3) post-production data. Phase 1 allowed us to obtain the high-fidelity version of the graphical user interfaces (n = 5). Phase 2 showed a task completion success rate of 100% (n = 5). Phase 3 was derived from statistical analysis of the usage of the platform by real end users (n = 90). We achieved an average retention rate of 35% (31 out of 90 participants). Each technique has provided input for the continuous design and improvement of the platform. This allowed the creation of a tailored platform that could meet users’ expectations. Nevertheless, the retention rate decreased significantly over a short period of time, revealing the need for further work in the improvement of the gamification experience.
  • Tracking human routines towards adaptive monitoring: the MOVIDA.domus platform
    Publication . Gordalina, Gonçalo; Figueiredo, João; Martinho, Ricardo; Rijo, Rui; Correia, Pedro; Assunção, Pedro A. Amado; Seco, Alexandra; Pires, Gabriel; Oliveira, Luís; Fonseca-Pinto, Rui
    According to estimates by the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy will continue to rise. This indicator, being a measure of success in terms of healthcare, is not synonymous with quality of life and will increase healthcare costs. Associated with this problem are also the changes in terms of the organization of society, which has not been able to solve these constraints of functional limitations, dementia, social isolation, and loneliness. This paper presents the concept of adaptive surveillance based on mobile technology and artificial intelligence, presented in the context of a global physical activity monitoring program (MOVIDA), in his domus dimension designed to the elderly people with some functional limitation or dementia. The proposed solution for an adaptive surveillance is thus to conduct direct supervision programs, to enroll persons who live alone or in nursing homes who need supervision without limiting their individual autonomy. The preliminary results show that it is possible to use the data obtained from a mobile smartphone to identify routines and use this information to identify daily patterns. Changes to these routine patterns can be used to generate alarms for caregivers.
  • FlexSPMF: A Framework for Modelling and Learning Flexibility in Software Processes
    Publication . Martinho, Ricardo; Varajão, João; Domingos, Dulce
    Software processes are dynamic entities that are often changed and evolved by skillful knowledge workers such as software development team members. Consequently, flexibility is one of the most important features within software process representations and related tools. However, in the everyday practice, team members do not wish for total flexibility. They rather prefer to learn about and follow previously defined advices on which, where and how they can change/adapt process representations. In this paper we present FlexSPMF: a framework for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes. It comprises three main contributions: 1) identifying a core set of flexibility concepts; 2) extending a Process Modelling Language (PML)'s metamodel with these concepts; and 3) providing modelling resources to this extended PML. This enables process engineers to define and publish software process models with additional (textual/graphical) flexibility information. Other team members can then visualise and learn about this information, and change processes accordingly.
  • Evaluation of an e-health platform for informal caregivers and health professionals: the case study of Help2Care
    Publication . Gomes, N.; Caroço, J.; Rijo, R.; Martinho, R.; Querido, A.; Peralta, T.; Dixe, Maria dos Anjos
    The Help2Care e-Health platform was developed in order to capacitate infor-mal caregivers with digital, multimedia training materials. Health professionals select these materials according to the needs of the homebound patients under the supervision of these caregivers. In turn, caregiver can then use their smartphones to consult and apply the care procedures illustrated by these materials. In this paper, we present the results of performed usability tests for both web and mobile software applications of the Help2Care platform. These indicate an overall positive outcome, revealing less usable aspects such as the navigation flow in the web application and some design elements in the mobile application. Important written feedback was also collected, which we took into consideration to improve the software features of the platform.
  • Help2CARE - Towards a digital platform to help to care for dependent persons and caregivers
    Publication . Gomes, Nuno; Caroço, João; Martinho, Ricardo; Rijo, Rui; Querido, Ana; Dixe, Maria dos Anjos
    Nowadays, the training of caregivers and patients in self-care is performed in a health professional-to-patient/caregiver oral communication during consultation or discharge from the hospital, which leads to a limited knowledge retention rate either by caregivers and patients in self-care. The Help2CARE project aims to reduce the high rate of readmissions of patients in hospitals due to the lack of training of their informal caregivers. Therefore, we propose to train these caregivers/self-care patients through the provision of training materials that can increase the level of care provided. For this purpose, we present in this paper the Help2CARE digital platform, consisting of a web application and a mobile application that communicate with each other, which enables training materials to be available to caregivers (according to their patients’ needs of care) in a mobile application. With the web application, it is possible for a health professional to manage caregivers and materials to be made available to them, in order to enable those caregivers to access them through the mobile application, among other features, which enables health professionals to accomplish a closer monitoring of the caregivers under their guidance.
  • A quantitative approach for measuring the degree of flexibility of business process models
    Publication . Mejri, Asma; Ayachi-Ghannouchi, Sonia; Martinho, Ricardo
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure the flexibility of business process models. The authors give the notions of flexible process distance, which corresponds to the number of change operations needed for transforming one process model into another, considering the different perspectives (functional, operational, behavioral, informational, and organizational). Design/methodology/approach The proposed approach is a quantitative-based approach to measure the flexibility of business process models. In this context, the authors presented a method to compute the distance between two process models. The authors measured the distance between a process model and a process variant in terms of the number of high-level change operations (e.g. to insert or delete actors) needed to transform the process model into the respective variant when a change occurred, considering the different perspectives and the flexible features. Findings To evaluate the flexibility-measurement approach, the authors performed a comprehensive simulation using an emergency care (EC) business process model and its variants. The authors used a real-world EC process and illustrated the possible changes faced in the emergency department (possible variants). Simulation results were promising because they fit the flexibility needs of the EC process users. This was validated using the authors’ previous work which consists in a guidance approach for business process flexibility. Research limitations/implications The authors defined six different distances between business process models, which are summarized in the definition of total process distance. However, changes in one perspective may lead to changes in other perspectives. For instance, adding a new activity may lead to adding a new actor. Practical implications The results of this study would help companies to obtain important information about their processes and to compare the desired level of flexibility with their actual process flexibility. Originality/value This study is probably the first flexibility-measurement approach which incorporates features for capturing changes affecting the functional, operational, informational, organizational, and behavioral perspectives as well as elements related to approaches enhancing flexibility.
  • CAPÍTULO III - PROMOVENDO COMPORTAMENTOS SAUDÁVEIS NA ADOLESCÊNCIA COM UMA APLICAÇÃO MÓVEL: O PROCESSO DE ILUSTRAÇÃO, DESIGN E GAMIFICAÇÃO.
    Publication . Reis, Catarina; Pernencar, Cláudia; Carvalho, Marta; Fragata, Nuno; Martinho, Ricardo; Alves, Rodrigo; Morais, Teresa
    o Projeto TeenPower adotou um conjunto de estratégias com o intuito de promover a solução de mHealth especialmente concebida para adolescentes. No sentido de divulgar, promover e envolver os adolescentes na utilização desta aplicação móvel foi necessário definir e seguir orientações de promoção que viabilizassem a utilização da aplicação. A imagem da marca TeenPower e o seu logotipo customizado foram utilizados em operações de marketing e divulgação junto dos adolescentes, numa perspetiva de gerar afinidade e identificação/reconhecimento com o projeto. Foram criadas ilustrações e grafismos específicos para adolescentes, no sentido de promover hábitos de vida saudáveis através de cartazes para impressão ou digitais especialmente concebidos para adolescentes. Este processo decorreu no âmbito de uma unidade curricular uC de Design e Composição Gráfica do curso de Ilustração e Produção Gráfica e envolveu todos os estudantes no sentido de lhes permitir experimentar com um caso real a temática da uC. Toda a experiência de utilização da aplicação móvel foi cuidadosamente concebida, validada e implementada, de forma incremental e continuada. A geração desta experiência de utilização foi merecedora de um estudo em 3 fases que apostou fortemente na realimentação do sistema recorrendo ao feedback obtido pelos utilizadores/avaliadores num determinado momento. o envolvimento de estudantes das áreas de design, enfermagem e engenharia permitiu tirar partido de uma equipa multidisciplinar que, conjuntamente com utilizadores adolescentes, concebeu a base de trabalho para a implementação descrita posteriormente na secção 3 do presente capítulo. Finalmente, e diretamente relacionado com o envolvimento continuado dos adolescentes surge a aposta na utilização de uma aplicação móvel. A gamificação foi uma das técnicas utilizadas, tanto na fase de conceção e desenho, como posteriormente, na fase de implementação. o grande objetivo foi conseguir manter os utilizadores envolvidos e dar uma resposta efetiva à redução da taxa de retenção dos utilizadores, da plataforma de mHealth TeenPower
  • Building Bridges for “Palliative Care-in-Place”: Development of a mHealth Intervention for Informal Home Care
    Publication . Laranjeira, Carlos; Dixe, Maria dos Anjos; Martinho, Ricardo; Rijo, Rui; Querido, Ana
    In Palliative Care (PC), family and close people are an essential part of provision of care. They assume highly complex tasks for which they are not prepared, with considerable physical, psychological, social and economic impact. Informal Caregivers (ICs) often falter in the final stage of life and develop distress, enhancing emotional burden and complicated grief. The lack of available and accessible in-person counselling resources is often reported by ICs. Online resources can promote early access to help and support for patient-IC dyads in palliative care. The primary aim of this research is to co-design, develop and test the feasibility of the Help2Care-PAL mHealth app that addresses the needs of ICs of palliative patients cared for at home. This Digital Health Intervention (DHI) in palliative care will be used for education, symptom management, communication and decision-making, to enhance Quality of Life (QoL) of patients and ICs, fostering anticipatory grief and the reach and efficiency of services.
  • Controlled trial of an mHealth intervention to promote healthy behaviours in adolescence (TeenPower): Effectiveness analysis
    Publication . Miguel Lopes de Sousa, Pedro; Martinho, Ricardo; Reis, Catarina I.; Dias, Sara Simões; Gaspar, Pedro; Dixe, Maria dos Anjos; Luís, Luís; Ferreira, Regina
    Aim To evaluate the effectiveness on lifestyle change of an mHealth intervention to promote healthy behaviours in adolescence (TeenPower) and to analyse the predictors of the mHealth intervention effectiveness. Design This study is designed as a non‐randomized controlled trial with a two‐arm structure. Methods Adolescents of 12–16‐year old were recruited from three school districts, with access to the Internet and smartphone/tablet devices. The intervention group was invited to engage in the mHealth intervention (TeenPower) for 6 months in addition to a school‐based intervention. The control group only followed the school‐based intervention. A repeated measures factorial ANOVA was used and the main effectiveness outcome was the lifestyle change measured by the adolescent lifestyle profile. Results The outcomes of the mHealth intervention (TeenPower) show a significant effect on nutrition (ƞ2p = 0.03, p = .03), positive life perspective (ƞ2p = 0.04, p = .01), and global lifestyle (ƞ2p = 0.02, p = .05), with a dropout rate of 62.1%. The analysis of the effectiveness predictors of the mHealth intervention suggested that older adolescents tended to show a significant increase in the rates of stress management (r = .40; p < .05). Conclusions Although the considerable dropout rate, the mHealth intervention presented significant impact on multiple lifestyle domains, providing support for the effectiveness of mHealth interventions for health promotion as an add‐on to standard interdisciplinary interventions. Impact Adolescents must have the necessary and appropriate knowledge for the correct and responsible decision‐making regarding their health and lifestyle. Innovative strategies (mHealth intervention) were used to promote healthy behaviours. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention (TeenPower) specifically designed for adolescents. We found a significant impact in several lifestyle domains such as health responsibility, nutrition, positive life perspective, and global lifestyle.
  • Modelo de capacitação do cuidador informal para cuidar da pessoa com dependência.
    Publication . Dixe, Maria dos Anjos; Soares, Elsa; Martinho, Ricardo; Rijo, Rui; Caroço, João; Gomes, Nuno; Querido, Ana