Edinburgh Napier University

  Background
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death and disability globally. In Australia less than 50% of all people at highest risk of a CVD event are receiving and adhering to best practice recommendations (lifestyle and pharmacotherapy) to lower their risk. The hypothesis of the Consumer Navigation of Electronic Cardiovascular Tools (CONNECT) study will assess whether a cross platform consumer focused e-health application provided to people at moderate to high risk of a cardiovascular disease (CVD) event will improve risk factor control when compared with usual health care.

Objectives
Our aim is to take a User-Centred Design approach (UCD) to the development of a cross platform (web, mobile, tablet) intervention that is integrated with local electronic health records (EHR) and the national Australian shared EHR environment. The intervention is targeted at individuals with moderate to high risk of CVD including those that have already been diagnosed with CVD. We hypothesise that a content rich e-health application that is linked to the existing primary health care system and is designed around users will improve the patients’ health care experience and the quality of health care provided.

Methods
Drawing on Michie’s behaviour change wheel and Fogg’s Behaviour Change Model for persuasive design, we will describe the process of designing the cross platform intervention. We will present findings from the entire design lifecycle. This includes results of background analysis (academic literature review and competitor analyses), a range of UCD research activities involving representative user groups (for e.g. Diary Studies and co-Design Workshops) and the iterative co-development, of prototypes incorporating proposed elements such as interactive CVD risk communication tools, notifications (via SMS, email, in-app alerts), motivational messages and personal health summary information etc.

Results
Components of the program will be presented including iterative prototypes as well as discussion of the technological considerations and approach. Initial end-user acceptance data and feasibility of the intervention for engaging users around cardiovascular disease management will be discussed.

Conclusion
The co-development of a content rich, consumer focused e-health intervention that is integrated with the Australian primary health care system will greatly inform the e-health agenda and serve as a potential model for development of such interventions elsewhere. The next stages of the project will involve evaluating the intervention in a large scale RCT to look at clinical outcomes.