inSERT -- An NFC-based Self Reporting Questionnaire for Patients with Impaired Fine Motor Skills

Self-reporting patient data are valuable feedback for medical treatment and care process, as well as for clinical trial studies and support of medical treatment. However, traditional paper-based medical patient longitudinal surveys or questionnaires for health and well-being status information are time- and cost-consuming, and may suffer from low patient compliance. Consequently, an NFC-based electronic data capture prototype called inSERT has been designed that allows quick and easy self-reporting for patients. inSERT allows patient monitoring enabling, electronic acquisition of well-being data right from the patient´s home and real time representation of patient data, enabling direct medical intervention by physicians. The functional requirements for the inSERT system were determined through an extensive, user-centric elicitation process. We chose Near Field Communication (NFC) as a technology, for which the interaction paradigm is quick to learn and is intuitive, without prior knowledge being necessary, it is almost as simple as to fill out a paper-based questionnaire. Particularly for the target group (elderly people and people with impaired fine motor skills) - those who are not familiar with the use of mobile phones or computers - it makes NFC a very promising field compared to the control with touch based displays or computer mouse. The prototype is currently evaluated in a field test. The technical feasibility, implementation details, limitations and future research approaches are discussed in this paper.