


An effective team must also be formed with the required expertise to handle every phase of the development lifecycle, from clinical problem identification, user research, design, development, and product release. This user research should be incorporated throughout the development process to assure that the users are continually being considered. Next, the intended users must be interviewed to ensure that the solution solves a relevant problem for them. Overall, this report will serve as a blueprint for clinicians and biomedical researchers looking to better benefit their patients or colleagues via medical mobile apps.įull size image Misconception #1-the investigator fully understands the problem they are trying to solve and the users they intend to help Realityīefore the development process can start, the competitive landscape should be assessed to confirm that there is not already an identical or similar goal solution. In this report, we discuss major misconceptions clinicians and biomedical researchers often hold regarding medical app development, the steps we took to establish this unit to address these issues and the best practices and lessons learned from successfully ideating, developing, and launching medical apps. To bridge this skill set gap, we established an academic unit of designers, software engineers, and scientists that leverage human-centered design methodologies and multi-disciplinary collaboration to develop clinically viable smartphone apps. Indeed, problems requiring mobile app solutions are often nuanced, requiring more than just clinical expertise, and issues such as the cost and effort required to develop and maintain a well-designed, sustainable, and scalable mobile app are frequently underestimated. However, many critical challenges in the app development process impede bringing these translational technologies to patients, caused in large part by the lack of knowledge among clinicians and biomedical researchers of “what it takes” to design, develop, and maintain a successful medical app. With today’s pace of rapid technological advancement, many patient issues in modern medicine are increasingly solvable by mobile app solutions, which also have the potential to transform how clinical research is conducted.
