A mobile health application to assist health professionals: a case study in a portuguese nursing home

Abstract

The rapidly aging population has been a matter of concern over years since this problematic has been posing several challenges to healthcare systems worldwide. In Portugal, which is one of the countries with the largest aging population, nursing homes have been getting a higher demand, and health professionals are overloaded with work. Furthermore, the fact that few nursing homes use health information and communication technology (ICT) resorting to paper to record information and clinically manage their residents is a tremendous problem, since this method is more prone to errors and time-consuming. Thus, this paper proposes the design and development of a mobile application for health professionals working in a Portuguese nursing home with the intention of assisting them at the point-of-care, by recording and providing all the necessary information, and helping them to schedule, perform, and digitally record their tasks. This solution will help health professionals to provide better care, by reducing time-waste and errors, and, consequently, to improve elders' quality of life. A mobile solution was chosen since a hand-held device, which can be used anywhere and anytime, is able to give access and store all the needed information at the point-of-care.