Understanding the Stakeholders’ Expectations About an Adherence App: A Case Study

Digital health assistants are increasingly used to improve adherence to pharmaceutical treatments because of their intuitiveness, timeliness, and ubiquity. These applications serve the goals of different kinds of stakeholders, all interested in ensuring adherence: the patients, the physicians treating the patient, the pharmaceutical companies sponsoring the treatment, and the software developers selling the application. If unquestioned, different expectations can be reflected in digital assistants pursuing erratic, confusing goals. In this case study, we focus on an application called PatchAi (PA), which assists the collection of patients’ data during medical treatments; we aimed to understand the way in which different stakeholders conceive the role of PA. We carried out 14 interviews, with patients, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and software developers. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with a two-stage thematic analysis, yielding in the end 76.8% inter-coders’ agreement. We identified six roles of PA, i.e., guide, interlocutor, safe box, lifesaver, secretary, and travel mate. We also break down the frequency with which each role is mentioned by the different classes of stakeholders involved in the interviews. We conclude with some formative design implications.