Development of ‘use-cases’ for a digital palliative care bereavement service

Nwosu, Amara and Stanley, Sarah and Mulcahy, Marie-Claire and Mason, Stephen and Fayoumi, Amjad and Chapman, Laura (2022) Development of ‘use-cases’ for a digital palliative care bereavement service. In: 12th World Research Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC), 2022-05-182022-05-20.

Abstract

Background Grief is a natural process, in which many people will cope with help from their friends and family. However, many people will need professional help. Good bereavement care is important to ensure that people get the support they need when they are grieving. Digital tools can potentially provide support for bereaved people; however, this has not been extensively studied. In computer systems design, ‘use-cases’ describe individual event steps a user needs to navigate to complete an action or goal on a digital system. Well-designed use-cases can improve the efficacy and effectiveness of the developed system. Use-cases for digital bereavement support have not been established; therefore, there is potential that their use could facilitate development of digital bereavement services. Aims We aim to develop ‘use-cases’ to describe the ‘event steps’ needed to design a digital service to provide three tiers of bereavement support, based on recommendations of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Methods We will review national UK relevant policy on palliative care bereavement services, and we will conduct semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, to inform the development of ‘use-cases’. Results In the short term, we use the outcomes of this work to explore how ‘use-cases’ can inform best use of existing technological systems. In the medium to long term, we will develop a research study where we will use these ‘use-cases’ to develop and test a digital bereavement service, to determine the effectiveness in providing support for bereaved persons. Conclusion We anticipate that this study will result in purposeful development of digital resources that take advantages of emerging technologies to deliver bereavement support. Using our approach, future studies can utilise the ‘use case’ method to improve the evidence base for digital health studies in palliative care. This will improve capacity for future palliative care research.