A usability model for chronic disease management mobile applications

The usability issues stand as one of the biggest obstacles to implement Mobile Healthcare Applications technologies. Consequently, the MHealth Apps users become confused in choosing the right apps for them. These applications must comply with the usability measure to ensure they can satisfy and are acceptable, especially chronic disease patients. Current usability evaluation models do not fulfill the usability characteristics and MHealth. These models tend to focus on the web application or general mobile apps. In addition, the evaluation of mHealth for further improvement becomes difficult or inaccurate. Thus, the main objective of this study is to construct a usability evaluation model for the chronic disease mobile application. A mixed methods research design was used in which qualitative data was collected using a systematic literature review to identify the usability characteristic and measures for MHealth. A purposive sampling technique was applied for semi-structured interviews with real users in gathering the usability requirements for the usability evaluation model. The usability characteristics and model development were verified by knowledge and domain experts. Usability testing was conducted with chronic disease patients as respondents, using chronic disease applications selected from an open-source mobile application to validate the implementation feasibility of the proposed model. Findings showed a total of five (5) usability characteristics, twelve (12) sub-characteristic, and forty-two (42) metrics were generated. The model was improvised based on the feedback from experts. This demonstrated the reliability, validity, and applicability of the model as guidelines to developers in developing the mobile healthcare application for chronic disease. This study makes a contribution by providing a usability model for usability practitioners and developers by incorporating new usability factors such as self-management as one of the usability factors for chronic disease. In addition, the model provides detailed guidelines to apply the model in evaluating mobile application to produce usable MHealth applications for patients with chronic diseases.