Sustainable Development Through a Mobile Application for a Community Clinic

Abstract: Implementing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions can alleviate pressing problems in society and are a central component of sustainable development. Often, healthcare addresses the symptoms without approaching the socioeconomic limiters that can lead to reduced individual economic freedoms from receiving healthcare. This paper investigates the question: How can technology and training interventions enable clinicians to offer care that addresses the socioeconomic limitations of their patients? This paper observes the implementation of a mobile app designed to offer people who cannot access health resources in Omaha, Nebraska, a city in the Midwestern United States. This study follows the design science and action research approach, with clinicians participating in developing the mobile app. As a result of COVID, patients no longer have access to the free clinic because it was shut down. The app is available to the broader community needing basic resources to stay healthy. Through sets of application revisions and observations of usage, this paper arrives at insights into how such applications can support multi-ethnic and underserved communities. The contribution of this paper is to provide contextually specific and rich descriptions of how to implement sustainable ICT solutions to meet the information needs of patients in underserved communities.