Design Principles for IoT-based eHealth-Services to Increase Patient Compliance

In this master thesis six design principles for IoT-based eHealth-services have been developed. The purpose of these guidelines is to make sure that such systems are accepted and perceived as useful by chronically ill patients. To understand the need, motivations and goals of the primary user group, a human-centered approach was taken. An online survey for chronically ill patients has been conducted to learn about their lives their disease and physicians have been interviewed to understand the context of their therapy. Based on these insights, the six design guidelines have been developed. After that, a high-fidelity prototype was implemented based on these design guidelines and evaluated with members of the primary user group. This evaluation showed that while the prototypes usability requires improvement, the general concept of an IoT-based eHealth system with the included features and characteristics was appreciated and accepted by users. Though further evaluation and revision might be necessary, the introduced design guidelines proved suitable for their intended use.