Abstract
BackgroundMost mobile pharmaceutical applications produced for people with visual disabilities in Thailand fail to meet the required standard due to poor-quality regulations, defective design, lack of user support and impracticality; as a result, visually-impaired people are unable to use them. This research is motivated by the limited use of this technology in primary medical services and its aim is to enable people with disabilities to access effective digital health information. The research objective is to analyse, design and develop a mobile pharmaceutical application with functions that are appropriate for visually-impaired users, and test its usability.ResultsBased on the design and development of the application, it contained five necessary functions. When testing the usability and users’ satisfaction, it was found that the input or fill of information in the application was of low usability. According to the test results, the medicinal database function was missing 71 times and the voice command function was missing 34 times. Based on users’ satisfaction results, users who had the highest level of usage gave higher average scores to users’ attitude, users’ confidence, user interface and system performance than those with lower levels of usage. The scores of both groups were found to be the same when discussing the implementation of the development.ConclusionsThis mobile application, which was developed based on the use of smart technology, will play an important role in supporting visually-impaired people in Thailand by enhancing the efficacy of self-care. The design and development of the application will ensure the suitability of many functions for visually-impaired users. However, despite the high functional capacity of the application, the gap in healthcare services between the general public and disabled groups will still exist if users have inadequate IT skills.
Highlights
Most mobile pharmaceutical applications produced for people with visual disabilities in Thailand fail to meet the required standard due to poor-quality regulations, defective design, lack of user support and impracticality; as a result, visually-impaired people are unable to use them
The application design was created as a wireframe, which is an informal design based on an analysis of the functionalities and design, together with considering pain points and users’ problems
One of the concerns at the time of the research was that the application must be able to operate on large screen devices due to the limited vision of visually-impaired users
Summary
Most mobile pharmaceutical applications produced for people with visual disabilities in Thailand fail to meet the required standard due to poor-quality regulations, defective design, lack of user support and impracticality; as a result, visually-impaired people are unable to use them. Especially in the form of mobile applications, provides users with a great many benefits, including reducing the time and cost of treatment and making it convenient for them to find health-related information These apps have become more accessible and helpful to many users, including those who are Nimmolrat et al BMC Med Inform Decis Mak (2021) 21:217 visually-impaired [11]. For these reasons, the Thai Government has introduced a policy that involves the application of smart technology in healthcare services in all parts of Thai society [12, 13]. Most medical services or tools in Thailand are dedicated to general users rather than those with impaired vision due to the eHealth Strategy of the Ministry of Public Health (2017–2026) of Thailand [14]
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