Enhancing a Cross-platform Application for Internet- and Mobile-based Interventions by Introducing a Communication Module

To deal with the annual growth of patients with mental health problems, eHealth systems, and in particular, internet- and mobile based interventions or IMIs, were introduced. At the Institute of Psychology and Education, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at Ulm University (KLIPS), IMIs are researched extensively and for this reason, a project was founded to develop a system, which would utilize IMIs. In this bachelor’s thesis, we introduced an communication module for this project. The two categories of problem statements regarding this introduction consist of the research and the technical part for this communication module. In the research section, we inspect, how communication enhances IMIs and how we can utilize guided interventions through it, by being able to receive feedback and send messages or questions according to it. The technical section on the other hand involved the process of implementing this module to the project. Consequently our objective was, to introduce said communication module to this project and enable guided interventions as well as communication between the patient and eCoach in the project. This included the design and implementation of this feature and thinking through the process of how this could be done. To do this, we analyzed related work, including other mental health and instant messaging applications, and started to build the structure. Other contributions included the update of Ionic 3 to 4, setting up other smaller features and setting up the base for push notifications. In conclusion, the challenges regarding the implementation were stated and an outlook was given for features and aspects that could be improved upon.