{"doi":"10.1101/2022.01.13.22268796","title":"A digital self-care intervention for Ugandan patients with heart failure and their clinicians: User-centred design and usability study","abstract":"Abstract Background The prevalence of heart failure (HF) is increasing in Uganda. Ugandan patients with HF report receiving limited information about their illness, disease management, or empowerment to engage in self-care behaviors. Interventions targeted at improving HF self-care have been shown to improve patient quality of life and to reduce hospitalizations in high-income countries. However, such interventions remain underutilized in resource-limited settings like Uganda. Objective To develop a digital health intervention that enables improved self-care amongst HF patients in Uganda. Methods We implemented a user-centred design process to develop a self-care intervention entitled Medly Uganda . The ideation phase comprised a systematic scoping review and preliminary data collection amongst HF patients and clinicians in Uganda. An iterative design process was then used to advance an initial prototype into a fully-functional digital health intervention. The evaluation phase involved usability testing of the developed intervention amongst Ugandan patients with HF and their clinicians. Results Medly Uganda is a digital health intervention that is fully integrated within a government-operated mobile health platform. The system allows patients to report daily HF symptoms, receive tailored treatment advice, and connect with a clinician when showing signs of decompensation. Medly Uganda harnesses Unstructured Supplementary Service Data technology that is already widely used in Uganda for mobile phone-based financial transactions. Usability testing showed the system to be accepted by patients, caregivers, and clinicians. Conclusions Medly Uganda is a fully-functional and well-accepted digital health intervention that enables Ugandan HF patients to better care for themselves. Moving forward, we expect the system to help decongest cardiac clinics and improve self-care efficacy amongst HF patients in Uganda.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":298485,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.95,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":987542,"name":"Sahr Wali","orcid":"0000-0003-1928-531X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987910,"name":"Patience Birungi","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987543,"name":"Joseph A Cafazzo","orcid":"0000-0002-3114-4440","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328480,"name":"Isaac Ssinabulya","orcid":"0000-0001-6521-7778","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328478,"name":"Ann R. Akiteng","orcid":"0000-0002-1261-6764","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":846290,"name":"Heather J. Ross","orcid":"0000-0003-4384-3027","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987544,"name":"Emily Seto","orcid":"0000-0002-8723-5915","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328479,"name":"Jeremy I. Schwartz","orcid":"0000-0003-0139-2600","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987541,"name":"Jason Hearn","orcid":"0000-0003-2895-1708","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":16,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:36.269611Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}