Steps to Develop a Mobile App for Pain Assessment of Cancer Patients: A Usability Study

Steps to Develop a Mobile App for Pain Assessment of Cancer Patients: A Usability Study: Health-related mobile apps have the potential to allow patients and providers to proactively and responsibly manage pain together. However, there is a gap between the science of pain and current mobile apps. To develop a prototype science-based pain assessment mobile app (PainSmart) for Android smartphones, pain assessment tasks were extracted from a clinical guideline. These tasks were then converted to activity diagrams and became the logic of PainSmart. Five participants diagnosed with breast cancer evaluated usability of PainSmart with the System Usability Scale. Patient experience was recorded using Camtasia Studio Version 9 software. The five participants were able to explore the pain app after only 20 minutes of training. Using the System Usability Scale with comments, participant mean usability score was 77.5; above 68 is considered an above average system. A prototype of a pain assessment mobile app for cancer patients demonstrated high usability and will be refined based on participant feedback.

This study was supported by the Corbett Charitable Trust Fund at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (grant 621120-31510-101).

The authors have disclosed that they have no significant relationships with, or financial interest in, any commercial companies pertaining to this article.

Corresponding author: Jeeyae Choi, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, College of Health and Human Services, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 S College Rd, Wilmington, NC 28403 (choij@uncw.edu).

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