`Stakeholders’ involvement in the co-design and development of e-Perinatal, a mHealth app to prevent perinatal mental health disorders in maternal health care: Study Protocol’

Abstract

Project aim This study aims to co-design and develop, together with the involvement of the stakeholders, an innovative personalized mHealth app called ePerinatal for psychological intervention to prevent perinatal mental health disorders (depression and anxiety) in maternal health care. This project is frame in a European funded project (ERC grant). Setting The sector will be the usual maternal health care programme framed in the public ? primary health care centres in available in the public health care services of the Andaluscian Region in Spain. Method(s) / Approach We will employ an iterative mixed-methods design to co-design, produce, and test a prototype of the e-Perinatal app, according to stakeholders’ preferences. We will follow these three phases: 1) A prototype of the e-Perinatal app (beta version) will be designed with a healthcare software development company. 2) The prototype will be refined via a co-design process with 144 local stakeholders. 3) Usability testing will be undertaken with 8 pregnant/postpartum women and 8 fathers/partners from phase 2. Framework analysis and quantitative data from usability testing by simple descriptive statistics and tests of differences will examine qualitative data. Key insights We will co-design with stakeholders the ‘e-Perinatal app’, an innovative and personalized mHealth psychological intervention for universal prevention of maternal PMD, to be provided by health professionals to women and their partners for use throughout the entire perinatal period. We will test the feasibility and effectiveness of the ‘e-Perinatal app’ in two real-world trials in routine maternal health care practice for the prevention of perinatal mental health disorders.