An mHealth Intervention to Support Caregivers in Delivering Safer Home-Based Care: Protocol for a Participatory...

Background/Objectives: Caregivers play a central role in ensuring the safety of community-dwelling older adults receiving home-based care, yet gaps remain in ongoing educational support and communication with professionals. This protocol describes a two-phase study to customise an existing platform for use as a mobile health (mHealth) intervention supporting caregivers in delivering safer home-based care and Family and Community Nurses (FCNs) in supporting them, and to evaluate its feasibility, acceptability and usability. Methods: Phase 1 will apply a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach, articulated into four subphases, involving caregivers and a multidisciplinary panel of professionals from district-based health and social care services. Needs will be identified and prioritised through focus groups, informing the customisation and testing of the platform for use as an mHealth intervention. Phase 2 will adopt a convergent mixed-methods design within a Local Health Authority in Northern Italy, among a sample of at least 10 caregivers and a similar number of FCNs, over a 3-month data collection period. Acceptability and usability will be assessed as preliminary conditions for the adoption of a safety-oriented digital intervention, through quantitative self-reported measures, system-generated usage data, and semi-structured interviews. Conclusions: This study is expected to result in a customised platform for use as an mHealth intervention, together with preliminary evidence on its feasibility, acceptability and usability in supporting safer home-based care. Findings may inform future implementation strategies for digitally supported caregiving.