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

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.