MetaMood Phase Two: The software engineering of an Android app for a mental health e-health intervention using a novel gaming strategy.
Poster C90, Saturday, October 22, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Rhonda Wilson1, David Paul2, Paul Kwan2, William Billingsley2, Alec Shaw2; 1Lecturer Mental Health Nursing, School of Health, University of New England, Armidale, Australia, 2School of Science and Technology University of New England Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia, 3School of Science and Technology University of New England Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia, 4School of Science and Technology University of New England Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia, 5School of Science and Technology University of New England Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia
There is a growing literature to support greater engagement of clients in their own health care and recovery using e-health resources such as apps available for personal smart devices such as tablets (Christenson & Petrie, 2013; Pal et al., 2014; Wilson, Ranse, Cashin, & McNamara, 2013). Short intervention metabolic syndrome programs offered by face-to-face clinics have had mixed success in reducing the burden of disease for people with severe mental illness to date. The research presented in this paper reports on phase two of a project that has developed an Android app, MetaMood, designed to replicate the interventions of metabolic syndrome clinics in a digital format. The aim of the research is to develop software and gaming technology suitable for conducting clinical trials in the future to test the efficacy of the app. The completion of phase one (presented at RCN2015) of the project was the production of an app prototype. The completion of phase two has been the refinement of the software prototype. And a third phase will conduct international clinical pilot trials during 2016. This paper will report the progress made on the development of the app by demonstrating how new non-traditional interprofessional/transdisciplinary collaborations across nursing, information technology and software engineering are useful for the transferal of a multimodal metabolic syndrome reduction strategies, either as a standalone person-centric mental health recovery resource, or as an adjunct to enhance therapy as usual. This project highlights the important contributions of mental health nurses and clinicians, software developers and gaming technologists are making to e-health research and development.
Topic Area: Translational Research