User-driven design of a context-aware application: an ambient-intelligent nurse call system

The envisioned ambient-intelligent patient room contains numerous devices to sense and adjust the environment, monitor patients and support caregivers. Context-aware techniques are often used to combine and exploit the heterogeneous data offered by these devices to improve the provision of continuous care. However, the adoption of context-aware applications is lagging behind what could be expected, because they are not adapted to the daily work practices of the users, a lack of personalization of the services and not tackling problems such as the need of the users for control. To mediate this, an interdisciplinary methodology was investigated and designed in this research to involve the users in each step of the development cycle of the context-aware application. The methodology was used to develop an ambient-intelligent nurse call system, which uses gathered context data to find the most appropriate caregivers to handle a call of a patient and generate new calls based on sensor data. Moreover, a smartphone application was developed for the caregivers to receive and assess calls. The lessons learned during the user-driven development of this system are highlighted.