Developing and evaluating a smartphone application for the services of the clinical chemistry laboratory at Sakon Nakhon Hospital

Abstract

Currently, the usage of applications for health services in hospitals is on the rise. The advancement in information technology has led to an information and communication-based society, especially with smartphones making access to medical information easier, faster, and more convenient. The objective of this study was to assess the satisfaction of service users and Clinical Chemistry laboratory staff with the smartphone application in providing Clinical Chemistry services at Sakon Nakhon Hospital. The application was created using Glide Apps. The efficiency of the application was evaluated by conducting a satisfaction questionnaire for two groups, consisting of 93 ward staff and sub-district health promoting hospital staff (group 1), and 28 laboratory staff in the Department of Medical Technology and Clinical Pathology (group 2). The results indicated that the average satisfaction assessment scores for both groups in all topics, including structural and formatting application (4.05±0.60, 4.82±0.39), beautiful and attractive application design (3.97±0.67, 4.79±0.42), easy-to-use application (4.10±0.69, 4.89±0.31), easy-to-search information (4.15±0.64, 4.75±0.44), utilization (4.49±0.60, 4.93±0.26), reliability (4.55±0.50, 4.86±0.36), reducing service time (4.26±0.71, 4.82±0.39), reducing resource consumption (4.59±0.58, 4.82±0.39), easy-to-review and update documents (4.35±0.56, 4.82±0.39), and easy-to-apply with other works (4.43±0.50, 4.82±0.39), were generally positive. However, the topic of beautiful and attractive application design received lower scores from group 1 evaluators than other topics, with an average score of 3.97 points, but still received a good evaluation level. For the evaluators in group 2, they gave high satisfaction evaluation scores and received very good levels in every evaluation topic. In conclusion, creating a smartphone application to provide Clinical Chemistry services has generated great satisfaction for both users. However, developing additional usability features for Clinical Chemistry applications is still necessary to expand the scope of work and cover all groups of service users in the future.