Development and Usability Evaluation of an Opioid Management App

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Behavioral Economics
• Patient Engagement

Background:

• Post-surgical pain management often involves opioid medications.
• Effective patient engagement is crucial for safe opioid use, weaning, and disposal.
• Novel digital tools can support patient behavior change in healthcare settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development of a novel patient engagement tool (OPY) for post-surgical opioid medication management.
• To evaluate the early-stage usability and perceived usefulness of the OPY tool from expert and end-user perspectives.
• To identify areas for improvement in the OPY tool's user interface and features.

Main Methods:

• Development of the OPY tool incorporating principles of behavioral economics.
• Expert-based heuristic analysis to assess the tool's design and functionality.
• User testing with end-users (patients) to gather feedback on usability and subjective usefulness.

Main Results:

• Patients found the OPY tool to be easy to use during initial evaluations.
• Subjective usefulness ratings indicated moderate potential, but also room for improvement.
• Expert heuristic analysis and user feedback highlighted the need for UI and feature enhancements.

Conclusions:

• The novel patient engagement tool (OPY) shows promise for improving post-surgical opioid management.
• Further development, particularly in user interface and features, is necessary based on expert and user feedback.
• Close collaboration between developers and stakeholders is essential for optimizing the tool's effectiveness.