TY - JOUR
T1 - Buy or Build
T2 - Challenges Developing Consumer Digital Health Interventions
AU - Saver, Barry G.
AU - Marquard, Jenna L.
AU - Gummeson, Jeremy
AU - Stekler, Joanne
AU - Scanlon, James M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/2/1
Y1 - 2023/2/1
N2 - Background â Digital health interventions offer opportunities to improve collaborative care between clinicians and patients. Designing and implementing digital health interventions requires decisions about buying or building each technology-related component, all of which can lead to unanticipated issues. Objectives â This study aimed to describe issues encountered from our buy or build decisions developing two digital health interventions over different timeframes, designed to use patient-generated health data to: (1) improve hypertension control and (2) measure and improve adherence to HIV-related medications. Methods â CONDUIT-HID (CONtrolling Disease Using Information Technology-Hypertension In Diabetes) was developed during 2010 to 2015 to allow patients receiving care from a multispecialty group practice to easily upload home blood pressure readings into their electronic health record and trigger clinician action if mean blood pressure values indicated inadequate control. USE-MI (Unobtrusive SEnsing of Medication Intake) was developed from 2016 to 2022 to allow entry of patients' HIV-related medication regimens, send reminders if patients had not taken their medications by the scheduled time(s), attempt to detect medication ingestion through machine learning analysis of smartwatch motion data, and present graphical adherence summaries to patients and clinicians. Results â Both projects required multiple buy or build decisions across all system components, including data collection, transfer, analysis, and display. We used commercial, off-The-shelf technology where possible, but virtually all of these components still required substantial custom development. We found that, even though our projects spanned years, issues related to our buy or build decisions stemmed from several common themes, including mismatches between existing and new technologies, our use case being new or unanticipated, technology stability, technology longevity, and resource limitations. Conclusion â Those designing and implementing digital health interventions need to make numerous buy or build decisions as they create the technologies that underpin their intervention. These buy or build decisions, and the ensuing issues that will arise because of them, require careful planning, particularly if they represent an edge case use of existing commercial systems.
AB - Background â Digital health interventions offer opportunities to improve collaborative care between clinicians and patients. Designing and implementing digital health interventions requires decisions about buying or building each technology-related component, all of which can lead to unanticipated issues. Objectives â This study aimed to describe issues encountered from our buy or build decisions developing two digital health interventions over different timeframes, designed to use patient-generated health data to: (1) improve hypertension control and (2) measure and improve adherence to HIV-related medications. Methods â CONDUIT-HID (CONtrolling Disease Using Information Technology-Hypertension In Diabetes) was developed during 2010 to 2015 to allow patients receiving care from a multispecialty group practice to easily upload home blood pressure readings into their electronic health record and trigger clinician action if mean blood pressure values indicated inadequate control. USE-MI (Unobtrusive SEnsing of Medication Intake) was developed from 2016 to 2022 to allow entry of patients' HIV-related medication regimens, send reminders if patients had not taken their medications by the scheduled time(s), attempt to detect medication ingestion through machine learning analysis of smartwatch motion data, and present graphical adherence summaries to patients and clinicians. Results â Both projects required multiple buy or build decisions across all system components, including data collection, transfer, analysis, and display. We used commercial, off-The-shelf technology where possible, but virtually all of these components still required substantial custom development. We found that, even though our projects spanned years, issues related to our buy or build decisions stemmed from several common themes, including mismatches between existing and new technologies, our use case being new or unanticipated, technology stability, technology longevity, and resource limitations. Conclusion â Those designing and implementing digital health interventions need to make numerous buy or build decisions as they create the technologies that underpin their intervention. These buy or build decisions, and the ensuing issues that will arise because of them, require careful planning, particularly if they represent an edge case use of existing commercial systems.
KW - consumer health informatics
KW - digital technology
KW - hypertension
KW - medication adherence
KW - patient participation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85170849166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85170849166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1055/a-2148-8036
DO - 10.1055/a-2148-8036
M3 - Article
C2 - 37541655
AN - SCOPUS:85170849166
SN - 1869-0327
VL - 14
SP - 803
EP - 810
JO - Applied clinical informatics
JF - Applied clinical informatics
IS - 4
ER -