Development and Evaluation of ShasthoBondhu: mHealth App for Guiding Emergency Remote Healthcare with Wearable IoT and AI Fusion

With the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases among the elderly population in Bangladesh, there is a critical need for essential solutions to address remote healthcare challenges. This research explores the integration of mobile health (mHealth) technology with wearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices to enhance remote healthcare services. Through a systematic four-step approach encompassing literature review for problem statement identification, needs assessment through quantitative analysis of research questions (RQs), app design and development utilizing User-Centered Design (UCD) and Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) method, and usability evaluation through User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), and mHealth App Usability Questionnaire (MAUQ), ShasthoBondhu, a Flutter-based cross-platform smartphone app, offers features such as automated vital monitoring and alerting, remote accessibility of account, location sharing based on user's vitals, convenient doctor appointments, instant emergency calls and real-time interaction with a virtual medical assistant powered by Large Language Model (LLM) tools. In addition, the app interfaces in bilingual format (Bangla and English) for seamless independent interactions. The assessment results, based on the 8-item UEQ-Sand 6-item MAUQ, showcased remarkable outcomes: UEQ's pragmatic and hedonic qualities surpassed benchmarks with means of 2.35 and 1.80, respectively, while MAUQ achieved an impressive 4.3 out of 5 on the rating scale. Henceforth, ShasthoBondhu charts the path forward, offering a scalable, user-centered solution with the fusion of mHealth technology, wearable IoT gadgets, and AI innovations to transform remote healthcare services in Bangladesh.