The mobile app MyHealthCoach provides a personalized mobile version of healthfinder.gov content to educate and motivate users towards wellness goals. It assesses users' health needs through a questionnaire, identifies actions to improve wellness, and creates personalized checklists. The app was co-designed with users and incorporates their feedback to be engaging, easy to use, and accessible on all mobile platforms and in both English and Spanish.

1. • Information-rich mobile
extension of healthfinder.gov
• Takes myhealthfinder
personalization to a new level
• Educates, identifies actions to
take, and helps motivate and
manage wellness activities
BrowerGroup
Partners

2. Usability & Design Goals
• Provide a mobile version of healthfinder.gov to attract
users and promote wellness.
• Extensive use of symbols and images to simplify screens
and navigation while providing accessibility prompts.
• Draw the user >>in<< with a challenge/quiz which
promotes health literacy.
• myhealthfinder functionality for personalized preventive
services, wellness information, and to-do/action lists for
you and your family members.
• Full functionality available in English and Spanish.

3. How Does MyHealthCoach Work?
• MyHealthCoach is designed to be personal. The wellness questionnaire assesses a
person‟s wellness - that is, are they taking the appropriate actions to stay healthy.
These questions are derived from healthfinder‟s content and responses to these
questions identify gaps where follow-up is suggested and logged to personalized
follow-up checklists. At various points within the process, the user can add calendar
reminders and post activities and facts to facebook and Twitter to share
recommendations of interest or plans to take action.
• MyHealthCoach is designed to reach a broad population of users, especially those who
may not normally seek out guidance on how to stay healthy. A new user is challenged
with a brief wellness quiz based on healthfinder data. This quiz gives immediate
feedback on responses and provides statistics on previous user answers.
• MyHealthCoach is designed to educate. Within the quiz, wrong answers are corrected
and explained. Throughout the quiz and questionnaire, links are provided to easily
view topic-specific wellness recommendations and actions to take.
• MyHealthCoach is designed to motivate and facilitate action. The assessment makes
things personal by targeting specific areas needing attention and it links those areas
to specific actions to take. As the wellness gaps are identified, the app builds a
personalized checklist so that the user can, for example, easily reference all the
questions to ask their physician on their next visit.

4. The App
• MyHealthCoach is available as a mobile web site supporting all major mobile platforms
(iPhone, Android, BlackBerry etc.).
o Based on jQuery Mobile, a touch-optimized web framework for smartphones and tablets.
o Supports embedded iFrame deployment.
o Does not require separate source code for each platform (easier to maintain)
o Native Android and iPhone apps available using WebView.
• The healthfinder.gov content has been extracted and populated into an app-specific
database.
o Database was built from the Healthfinder.gov API XML
o Content was extracted for both English and Spanish
o Database maintenance plan has been established and extraction programs have been
created to provide for periodic data refresh
• Section 508 Accessibility Compliance
o 1194.22 Web-based intranet and internet information and applications.
o Ran through 508 testing using WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
 Remediated all errors
o Tested using iPhone VoiceOver
 Minor modifications made to enable app navigation by voice prompts

5. Testers engaged 28
Feedback items received 197
Issues addressed 37
Co-Design with End User Suggestions completed 44
• 36 Health Tech Hatch suggestions received from 8 different testers
• Phase 2 testing resulted in over 150 suggestions / issues from 20+ testers
o Fixed all significant issues (37) and implemented 26 suggestions
• Most impactful comments – all implemented:
o Some of the screen shots have too many words
o Save and retrieve for return visits, even on different devices
o Introduction for new user identifying source of data
o Provide a to-do list of health actions to be taken for user and user‟s family members
o Create specific list of actions for doctor follow-up
o Integrate the to-do list with the phone's calendar to provide reminders
• Immediate futures
o Access to most recent healthfinder.gov news articles
o Add 'track your health„ where you can enter and graph your cholesterol, weight, blood
sugars, blood pressures over time
o Sort search results by relevance (keyword frequency, keyword “closeness”)

6. Strengths and Advantages
MyHealthCoach is...
... an easy-to-use application written in plain language geared towards those with limited
health literacy.
... a source of healthfinder.gov information, essentially a personalized mobile extension of
Healthfinder content and branding.
... engaging, leveraging graphics and a simple design to communicate with the less web-
savvy user.
... the result of co-design, incorporating end-user feedback.
... innovative, challenging and educating users in the interest-capturing form of a health
quiz.
... independently tested and verified by end-users.
... section 508 compliant, navigable via voice prompts.
... focused on improving the health of a broad set of people through dissemination and
personalization of health and wellness information.