Designing and Developing a Self-Care Application for Post-Laryngectomy Surgery

Introduction: Laryngectomy is the only known treatment for laryngeal cancer. The objective of this study was to design and develop a self-care application for patients undergoing laryngeal resection surgery. Method: This study was an applied-developmental one conducted in two stages. The first stage included assessing the need for data elements using questionnaire by 14 ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists. Then, the application prototype was developed in Java. In the second stage, the usability of the application was evaluated using standard questionnaire of usability evaluation. Results: The results of the first stage included two main parts of clinical information and application capabilities. The clinical information consisted of 14 main groups and 35 subgroups with a mean score of 9.9. The application capability also included alarm, reminder, messaging, social networks, clinic reservation, and Internet connection. According to the participants, all information items of the questionnaire were declared as necessary. The usability of the application was also evaluated at a good level with an overall average of 7.6. Conclusion: Using a self-care application for post-laryngectomy patients will help increase their knowledge and facilitate self-care. Thus, it could be expected that using self-care technology and applications would reduce patients’ visits to health care centers as well as the number of their educational and care questions asked from health care staff. However, it is suggested that further studies be conducted with larger population and in different provinces.