Towards the Development of a User-Centred Health Management Application for Elderly

Abstract

As the world is gearing towards an increased older adult population, the need to focus on wellness and healthy lifestyle become essential. Studies reveal evident of delaying the chronic diseases that cause serious health issues among the elderly, which is made possible by educating the elderly on healthy ageing. Mobile applications can be used as a tool to educate the elderly on health management. Hence, the focus on developing health management mobile applications has arisen among the software engineering community as well as the medical experts. Though a considerable amount of health management applications are available online, which some of it are already in use, many still find these application to be less effective and the elderly community is left behind in using them as they don't provide sufficient features preferred by the elderly. Hence, this research focuses on developing a user centered health management application exclusively for the elderly. User requirement related information was collected, and a thorough literature review was conducted with the aim of finding the preferred features needed in the application and the proof of concept prototype was developed. The developed application underwent a functional testing process, where the system performed as expected.