Designing an App for Maternity Care: Improving Communication between Swedish Midwives and Arabic-speaking Women

Abstract

Good communication is essential for good healthcare. In maternity care, inadequate communication may contribute to poorer outcomes in pregnancy. A large number of Syrian, Arabic-speakingimmigrants arrived in Sweden in 2015-2016. A trans-disciplinary team acted as intermediariesbetween midwives and a technical company to develop a Swedish-Arabic communication app for usein antenatal care. An earlier study describes the creation of the content and the development of theprototype. This paper describes the next phase of the study, i.e., testing the prototype, refining thestructure and content, and development of the next version. A user-centred approach with a normcritical perspective was applied. Workshops and observations were performed for interaction betweenthe midwives and the research group, facilitating development from a user perspective. A final versionof the app was developed. Future plans are to evaluate the app and produce a Swedish-Englishversion.