Requirements for mHealth and Augmented Reality Apps for Patient Education Regarding Colorectal Cancer Surgery: Focus...

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Patient Education
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Preoperative informed consent aims to empower patients with treatment details for informed decision-making.
• Patients often struggle to comprehend and retain complex medical information.
• Mobile health (mHealth) and augmented reality (AR) show potential in improving patient education and knowledge retention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine essential requirements for an mHealth app supporting informed decision-making in colorectal cancer patients.
• To explore the role of AR in visualizing medical information for enhanced patient understanding.
• To gather patient and physician perspectives on app design, information delivery, and visualization.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative focus group study involving colorectal cancer patients and physicians.
• Semistructured interviews guided discussions on personal experience, information content, context of use, and content presentation (2D, 3D, AR).
• Qualitative content analysis of transcribed interviews.

Main Results:

• Patients desire personalized, detailed, and visual information throughout their treatment journey.
• Patients preferred interactive 3D visualizations, while physicians favored simpler 2D images.
• AR was viewed as a supplementary tool for general anatomical overviews rather than a primary visualization method.

Conclusions:

• An ideal patient education app integrates comprehensive content with interactive visualizations (3D, AR) accessible throughout treatment.
• Patient-centered design is crucial, balancing detailed information with ease of understanding.
• App design must consider diverse patient preferences for visualization modalities and information detail.