Evaluating A Mobile App for Data Collection in Occupational Therapy Practice

Abstract

This study investigates the use of a mobile app for data collection in occupational therapy practice. Seven occupational therapists used a mobile app to collect data on housing-adaptation home visits for a period of two months. The occupational therapists documented five home visits on an online diary to document their use of the mobile app. Subsequently, a follow-up focus-group interview was conducted to discuss the diary results and elaborate on the use of the app in occupational therapy practice. The benefits of using the mobile app include the app’s systematic approach, ease of navigation, and the automation of data collection steps. Limitations include the inability to capture the complexity of the practice. Thus, the occupational therapists to some extent experienced that the need to use the mobile app is an added task in therapists’ daily work that did not reflect their current practice. Future transformations of paper-based tools must be conducted in a way that closely reflects the work processes in clinical practice. This study suggests that a digitized tool holds significant potential for developing clinical practice, but digitization does not change the issues or the complexity associated with the tool itself or the existing practice.