Designing an app to support people managing Long Covid

What is it about?

During and following the Covid-19 pandemic, Long Covid impacted many people’s lives. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians, engineers, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) specialists and patient representatives worked together to deliver a digital intervention that would support patients and their clinical teams in managing Long Covid. We had to adapt HCI methods to fit into an agile development process. We faced challenges included engaging with patients who were coping with fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, etc. and working with clinics with different patient pathways. In this paper we describe the app, Living With Covid Recovery; how we adapted HCI adapted methods for the situation; how we worked with diverse clinics; and implications for design of future technologies for supported self-management.

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Photo by Yura Fresh on Unsplash

Photo by Yura Fresh on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Building a flexible, usable online health intervention is very hard work. Creating it from scratch with an uncertain budget, for an unknown serious health condition and relying on the skills and willingness of a hard pressed, stressed team during the early days of the pandemic seemed almost impossible at times. This paper describes the experience and lessons learned. The lessons here are not specific to Long Covid. There are a lot of features in the process of developing the Living With Covid Recovery app that can be applied to many different and overlapping health conditions - this paper is essential reading for everyone in the healthtech sector and clinicians who want to create something that can really enhance clinically supported self-management.

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