The Steps of User-Centered Design in Health Information Technology Development: Recommendations from a PhD Research Study

This study was carried out to explore the steps of User-centered Design in development of health information technology. The technology was developed in two research projects: the European Union project United4Health that created a collaborative telemedicine system for remote monitoring of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and the Southern Norway regional project eHealth-extended Care Coordination that built an information system for coordination in inter-municipal health care teams. In both projects, the end-users were involved as active contributors in a User-centered Design process spanning from idea-generation until final deployment stages. This paper presents the steps in the User-centered Design process, based on the results of an empirical PhD research study.