Supporting stakeholder needs by ceding control: The benefits of listening to end-users

This paper reports on the progressive design process and actual use and evaluation in situ of an informatics system-the Home Care Informatics System-that transmits information obtained by home based pervasive health care systems to caregivers and clients in a timely manner and easily usable format. Since 2006, three versions of the system have been tested in a series of studies with care provision organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Findings from the studies have driven the development of the different iterations with the result being a customized model of pervasive health care that relies on the needs of the end-users, rather than the goals of the developers. Barriers encountered during the testing, that appear to be generalizable to the successful adoption of pervasive health care systems in general, are discussed and possible solutions suggested.