NUTRIA was a research project that focused on the development of a system to support the self-care of women with gestational diabetes. We explored the challenges faced by women with gestational diabetes in managing their condition, drawing on ethnographic and participatory research with patients, dietitians, and nurses. NUTRIA system integrated personalized meal plans, monitoring of blood glucose and an educational intervention, connecting patients with GD with their care team. Moreover, NUTRIA fostered sharing and dissemination of knowledge regarding user research, participatory design, and Human-Computer Interaction across clinical institutions.
Motivation
Gestational diabetes (GD) is a perinatal condition that can harm both mothers and fetuses if blood sugar levels are uncontrolled, leading to pregnancy complications and health risks. Women with GD need to manage their blood sugar, diet, and activity to prevent these issues, but this can be challenging as they have to learn new eating behaviours like portion control and find appropriate food equivalents. Self-care technologies could help by supporting learning and offering personalized meal plans. The goal of NUTRIA was to empower informed eating decisions and provide nutritional education. In the NUTRIA system, dietitians would personalize meal plans and define monitoring timings for managing gestational diabetes during pregnancy. Patients were able to assess the meal plans, track their blood glucose values and learn more information on the disease, nutrition in pregnancy and gestational diabetes and lifestyle factors that influenced GD. The content was aligned with the patient’s cultural practices, and personal food preferences.
Approach
To better understand the self-care practices and challenges of women with GD and their dietitians, we conducted user research and participatory design with women with GD, dietitians and nurses.
NUTRIA System is an integrated system to support the self-care of pregnant women with gestational diabetes (GD), composed of a mobile app for patients and a web platform for dietitians. The NUTRIA web app enables dietitians to create the patients profile, develop a personalized meal plan and monitor their blood glucose values. NUTRIA’s mobile app has three main features: Meal plan visualization, Monitoring of blood glucose and educational intervention on GD.
We conducted three field trials, in Portugal and Bangladesh, with over 140 participants, to assess the system’s usability and to better understand how the educational intervention changed patient’s literacy on GD.
Project Goals
With NUTRIA we addressed the challenges faced by women with gestational diabetes (GD) in managing their condition through changes in their dietary intake and physical activity . In more depth, our goals were as follows:
- Understand the challenges of the disease, self-care, and how pregnant women learn to live with gestational diabetes;
- Engage in participatory design to develop a personalised self-care technology;
- Create customised meal plans for pregnant women with GD.
Funding
NUTRIA is funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (2022.09373.PTDC).