Thai Pregnant Mobile Application: Review and Development Report

Abstract

Background: Since health-related information for pregnant women is extremely complex and sensitive, end-users of any application are required to have the same level of knowledge as the information providers to help them to navigate between various sources of information to ascertain the reliability of contents that are often confusing. However, although there are several such applications for Thai pregnant women in the market, few were developed based on research evidence. This study is focused on the design of a health application specifically for Thai pregnant women by extracting the explicit problems of existing applications and providing solutions to them. A design thinking methodology comprised of empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test was used as a guideline to develop a prototype app. IT experts, physical therapists and pregnant women were recruited as participants to address the problem taxonomy and obtain a solution. The new application produced in this study with the aim of encouraging pregnant women especially for Thai women to engage in physical activity was based on research, and the input of physical therapists, IT experts and pregnant women users was able to feasibly inform the development of an acceptable and usable mobile health application for pregnant women.