This course is part of the IT & Health Care module. It explores important basics for the development of an application area in healthcare, both from a technical and clinical/patient point of view (e.g., in areas related to eHealth, mHealth, pHealth). This course will further present general implementation aspects of clinical software in use and design concepts for designing small to middle sized IT infrastructures.

At the end students should be able to

• critically understand the technical, clinical/patient/use challenges of a particular application area
• understand the different theories, concepts and principles that can be used to inform principled design decisions
• apply the understanding to a particular case, engaging in requirements analysis, concept and design work, and being able to motivate design decisions against needs, clinical aspects, or theories/concepts as relevant.

For this year, the application focus of the course will be applications for promoting health and well being, e.g., for self-care of mental health

The course will cover:

• Introduction to the application domain and open challenges
• Critical analysis of current state of the art (currently available technologies and literature review)
• Introduction to the principles, concepts, theories that can inform design (theories of motivation, behaviour change etc)
• Application to a specific self-care design challenge (including basic requirements gathering, analysis, lo-fi prototyping)

The grading is based on group project work and individual exercises.

Didactical approach: We will take a highly interactive approach to facilitate learning experiences. Lecture content will be interwoven with small group exercises, critical reading of literature, class discussions, and design tasks. There is also substantial group project work.

Note:

• all components of the course have to be passed to achieve a pass mark overall
• a certificate will be issued once the first assessment is handed in

ECTS Breakdown: 3 ECTS = 75 hours

• Introduction to course: 1 hour
• Lectures:  10 hours
• In-class presentations/discussions: 10 hours
• Own reading, literature review: 10 hours
• Group projects: 42 hours (10 Group project 1; 32 Group project 2)
• Individual project: 12 hours

Assignments:

1. Critical Analysis  and elaboration of principles/theories [30%]: in-class presentation & written report  [Individual report/group work]
2. Short summaries of lectures and [optional] challenge short essay on a focussed topic of interest [20% available, 10 max for summaries] [Individual]
3. Application design project [50%]: in-class poster presentation and final written deliverable