User Centered Design of a Digital Platform for Therapeutic Education and Respiratory Rehabilitation in Patients with Post-COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been identified in over 617 million people. Most people who develop COVID-19 fully recover, but approximately 10%-20% of people experience a variety of mid and long-term effects after they recover from their initial illness. These mid and long-term effects are collectively known as post-COVID-19 conditions.COVID-19 sequelae may vary from mild in terms of fatigue and body aches to severe forms requiring long-term oxygen therapy and lung transplantation due to lung fibrosis leading to significant impairment in quality of health.Post-COVID-19 functional impairment can limit the ability of the individual to perform activities of daily living. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) could be an excellent strategy to target those individuals' physical and functional recovery and social reintegration through pulmonary rehabilitation. Telerehabilitation is a branch of telemedicine in which ICTs are used to provide remote rehabilitation activities directly. The goal of this study is to present the design, through a User-centered design approach, of a Telerehabilitation platform that includes therapeutic education exercises for the respiratory rehabilitation of people who have suffered from COVID-19 or any other respiratory disease. The research team designed a digital platform that includes therapeutic education exercises for the respiratory rehabilitation of people who have suffered from COVID-19 or any other respiratory disease. The result is an accessible digital platform that provides therapeutic education to users according to their age through remote respiratory self-rehabilitation sessions.User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. In the construction of our proposal we used an iterative design process in which designers and users are actively involved in artifacts. Our approach called iPlus, is a methodology for designing software with an educational purpose. The iPlus design approach is flexible and offers a design approach integrated with other agile methods. The design process begins by defining the problem according to its specific needs and defining the expected learning outcomes. iPlus offers a phase for the ascertainment of consensual requirements through the participation of experts and users. iPlus gives the participants options for active and creative involvement; it proposes a participatory approach in which designers and users focus on the user's requirements in each phase of the educational software design process.Finally, the methodology and the resulting platform will improve people's quality of life.