Blueprint Persona and ICT Interventions: Addressing Unmet Needs in Burning Mouth Syndrome Care

Abstract

ObjectivesThis study aimed to create a Blueprint Persona for Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS) patients, focusing on unmet needs that digital solutions can address. MethodsAn interdisciplinary focus group formulated the BMS Blueprint Persona by discussing clinical data and survey results regarding education, informatics skills, and perceived unmet needs, collected from 500 BMS patients between 2022 and 2023. ResultsThe BMS Blueprint Persona, named Anna, represents a typical BMS patient profile: a young-old woman with limited computer skills who experiences anxiety, depression, and insomnia, has memory issues leading to medication adherence challenges, is obese due to overeating, and spends much time watching TV at home. Anna's primary concern is receiving inadequate treatment and not achieving disease remission. She also feels misunderstood and lacks family support. This persona reveals several areas where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) interventions, like telemedicine, anxiety and insomnia treatment, drug adherence improvement, and nutritional and lifestyle guidance, could be beneficial. The focus group also outlined the essential features for a prospective mHealth app to meet BMS patients' diverse needs. ConclusionThe development of the BMS Blueprint Persona successfully identified patient characteristics and unmet needs, offering valuable insights for creating personalized diagnostic-therapeutic pathways and digital health solutions for BMS.