Empowering self-care: leveraging user insights to co-design AI-powered self-care technology for Parkinson's disease

This paper presents the co-design process of a self-care technology for people with Parkinson's disease (PwPs). The aim was to use patient insights to inform the design of a technology to support self-care practices. To this end, an 8-week usage diary method was used to capture the real-life experiences of PwPs using digital health technology for self-care in Parkinson's disease. The data collection process involved the use of two methods: weekly diary entries and semi-structured interviews. The qualitative data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings revealed that technology needs to be flexible, adaptive, and responsive to the evolving care needs of PwPs by incorporating interactive goal-setting, personalized self-tracking tools to promote active awareness, tailored care tips, and resources to support self-care practices at home. The study underscores how contextualized use of a digital health technology shapes self-care practices and highlights the need to develop solutions that are both technically reliable and integrated into the social and emotional realities of PwPs. The results of the usage diary study help identify potential ways to leverage artificial intelligence to advance self-care technologies.