Georgia Clinical Translational Science Alliance, Atlanta, USA.
Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, USA.
BMC Med. 2023 Mar 23;21(1):109. doi: 10.1186/s12916-023-02833-7.
With today's pace of rapid technological advancement, many patient issues in modern medicine are increasingly solvable by mobile app solutions, which also have the potential to transform how clinical research is conducted. However, many critical challenges in the app development process impede bringing these translational technologies to patients, caused in large part by the lack of knowledge among clinicians and biomedical researchers of "what it takes" to design, develop, and maintain a successful medical app. Indeed, problems requiring mobile app solutions are often nuanced, requiring more than just clinical expertise, and issues such as the cost and effort required to develop and maintain a well-designed, sustainable, and scalable mobile app are frequently underestimated. To bridge this skill set gap, we established an academic unit of designers, software engineers, and scientists that leverage human-centered design methodologies and multi-disciplinary collaboration to develop clinically viable smartphone apps. In this report, we discuss major misconceptions clinicians and biomedical researchers often hold regarding medical app development, the steps we took to establish this unit to address these issues and the best practices and lessons learned from successfully ideating, developing, and launching medical apps. Overall, this report will serve as a blueprint for clinicians and biomedical researchers looking to better benefit their patients or colleagues via medical mobile apps.
随着当今技术进步的快速步伐，现代医学中的许多患者问题越来越可以通过移动应用程序解决方案来解决，这也有可能改变临床研究的进行方式。然而，应用程序开发过程中的许多关键挑战阻碍了将这些转化技术带给患者，这在很大程度上是由于临床医生和生物医学研究人员缺乏“需要什么”来设计、开发和维护成功的医疗应用程序的知识。事实上，需要移动应用程序解决方案的问题往往很微妙，不仅仅需要临床专业知识，而且开发和维护设计良好、可持续和可扩展的移动应用程序所需的成本和精力也经常被低估。为了弥合这一技能差距，我们建立了一个由设计师、软件工程师和科学家组成的学术单位，利用以人为中心的设计方法和多学科合作来开发临床可行的智能手机应用程序。在本报告中，我们讨论了临床医生和生物医学研究人员在医疗应用程序开发方面经常持有的一些主要误解，我们为解决这些问题而采取的步骤，以及成功构思、开发和推出医疗应用程序的最佳实践和经验教训。总的来说，本报告将为希望通过医疗移动应用程序更好地为患者或同事带来益处的临床医生和生物医学研究人员提供蓝图。
