Project period
2016–2024
Funding
The Research Council of Norway and Oslo University Hospital
Summary
Modern medicine has significantly improved the treatment of many illnesses and has increased overall life expectancy. Longer life expectancy means that people also live longer with chronic illness. Interventions aiming to support activation of people’s own personal strengths may be of help for people living with chronic illness, enhancing healthy behaviors and health outcomes by activating own strengths and resources.
Building on previous work, this research project explored how information and communication technology can be used to help and engage chronic patients in discovery of their inner personal strengths, seeking to provide support and guidance on how patients’ own strengths could be used in coping and health management.
Gameful design
A doctorial project derived from the main project, seeking to design, develop, test and evaluate gameful designs in support of strength-based patient activation and wellbeing.
The project primarily centered around Participatory Design methodology, with patients living with chronic health challenges being involved throughout the project development and evaluation, in close collaboration with designers, researchers and digital developers.
The design and development phase sought to identify ways in which strengths-focused eHealth tools can be developed in line with users' needs, existing evidence and theories, as well as design guidelines. A feasibility pilot trial was subsequently conducted of the MyStrengths app. In this study, 26 participants with various chronic illnesses used the app for a month.
Findings suggest that while such strengths-focused digital tools might be most beneficial for users relatively newly diagnosed with health challenges, strengths-focused tools such as the MyStrengths app can be a helpful, user-centered way to provide support to people living with long term health challenges.
Collaborators
- Tonje Krogseth, Service User Consultant, Co-Researcher
- Kurt C. Stange, MD, PhD. Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States
- Shirley M. Moore, RN, PhD, FAAN
- Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
- Una Stenberg, PhD, Researcher. Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Learning and Mastery in Health, Oslo University Hospital HF, Oslo, Norway
- Hein De Vries, PhD. Caphri Research Institute, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
- Luis Fernandez Luque, PhD. Salumedia, Spain
- Christina Bode, PhD. Department of Psychology, Health & Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
