Healthcare Worker Feedback on a Prototype Smartphone-Based Point-of-Care Test Platform for Use in Episodic Care

摘要

With a growing list of new platforms, end-user acceptability is an evolving topic in point-of-care (POC) test development. Although technical reports of new experimental POC tests are common, it is rare to find reports that evaluate the end-user acceptability of such innovations. This work illustrates an example of bridging that gap by evaluating the end-user acceptability of an experimental POC test platform with novel technical features. A prototype smartphone-based sexually transmitted infection tests was evaluated by emergency department technicians, followed by a survey of acceptability factors. Our findings suggest that the end-user acceptability of some design features be implemented in the prototype. Point-of-care (POC) tests hold much promise for use in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), where immediate diagnosis and treatment of patients can help facilitate new strategies to address the persistent STI public health burden. Recent POC platforms have successfully incorporated nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) to achieve analytical performance on par with laboratory-based reference platforms. Despite such improvement, barriers mat limit the successful implementation of POC tests in clinical settings exist. Insufficient collaboration between developers and end users can lead to complexity in the use of the device, which translates poorly in the clinical setting, resulting in gaps or deficiencies in the usability of the POC device. Furthermore, these fundamental issues reoccur with new emerging POC devices owing to insufficient clinical needs assessments from end users.