Designing a Smartphone-Based Pulse Oximeter for Children in South Africa (Phefumla Project): Qualitative Analysis of Human-Centered Design Workshops With Health Care Workers.

BACKGROUND

Pulse oximeters noninvasively measure blood oxygen levels, but these devices have rarely been designed for low-resource settings and are inconsistently available at outpatient clinics.

OBJECTIVE

The Phefumla project aims to develop and validate a pediatric smartphone-based pulse oximeter designed specifically for this context. We present the process of human-centered oximeter design with health care workers in South Africa.

METHODS

We purposively sampled 19 health care workers from 5 clinics in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Using a human-centered design approach, we conducted participatory workshops with four activities with health care workers: (1) they received 3D-printed prototypes of potential oximeter designs to provide feedback; (2) we demonstrated on dolls how they would use the novel oximeter; (3) they used pile sorting to rank design features and suggest additional features they desired; and (4) they designed their preferred user interface using a whiteboard, marker, and magnetized features that could be repositioned. We audio recorded the workshops, photographed outputs, and took detailed field notes. Analysis involved iterative review of these data to describe preferences, identify key design updates, and provide modifications.

RESULTS

Participants expressed a positive sentiment toward the idea of a smartphone pulse oximeter and suggested that a pediatric device would address an important gap in outpatient care. Specifically, participants expressed a preference for the prototype that they felt enabled more diversity in the way it could be used. There was a strong tendency to prioritize pragmatic design features, such as robustness, which was largely dictated by health care worker context. They also added features that would allow the oximeter device to serve other clinical functions in addition to oxygen saturation measurement, such as temperature and respiratory rate measurements.

CONCLUSIONS

Our end user-centered rapid participatory approach led to tangible design changes and prompted design discussions that the team had not previously considered. Overall, health care workers prioritized pragmatism for pediatric pulse oximeter device design.