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Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App

BACKGROUND: Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) can still be found in many homes in Australia and other countries. ACMs present a health risk when they are damaged or disturbed, such as during do-it-yourself home renovations. However, community members lack knowledge and awareness about asbestos id...

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Autores principales: Govorko, Matthew Hayden, Fritschi, Lin, White, James, Reid, Alison
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6334671/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30684427
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/formative.8370
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author Govorko, Matthew Hayden
Fritschi, Lin
White, James
Reid, Alison
author_facet Govorko, Matthew Hayden
Fritschi, Lin
White, James
Reid, Alison
author_sort Govorko, Matthew Hayden
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) can still be found in many homes in Australia and other countries. ACMs present a health risk when they are damaged or disturbed, such as during do-it-yourself home renovations. However, community members lack knowledge and awareness about asbestos identification and its safe management in residential settings. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to describe the process of developing a mobile phone app, ACM Check, that incorporates a questionnaire designed to identify and assess ACMs located in residential settings. METHODS: A multidisciplinary team was involved in the formative development and creation of the mobile phone app. The formative development process comprised 6 steps: defining the scope of the app; conducting a comprehensive desktop review by searching online literature databases, as well as a wider online search for gray literature; drafting and revising the content, questionnaire, conditional branching rules, and scoring algorithms; obtaining expert input; manually pretesting the questionnaire; and formulating a final content document to be provided to the software development company. We then constructed ACM Check on the iOS platform for use in a validation study, and then updated the app, replicated it on Android, and released it to the public. RESULTS: The ACM Check app identifies potential ACMs, prioritizes the materials based on their condition and likelihood of disturbance, and generates a summary report for each house assessed. CONCLUSIONS: ACM Check is an initiative to raise community members’ awareness of asbestos in the residential environment and also serves as a data collection tool for epidemiologic research. It can potentially be modified for implementation in other countries or used as the basis for the assessment of other occupational or environmental hazards.
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spelling pubmed-63346712019-01-23 Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App Govorko, Matthew Hayden Fritschi, Lin White, James Reid, Alison JMIR Form Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) can still be found in many homes in Australia and other countries. ACMs present a health risk when they are damaged or disturbed, such as during do-it-yourself home renovations. However, community members lack knowledge and awareness about asbestos identification and its safe management in residential settings. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to describe the process of developing a mobile phone app, ACM Check, that incorporates a questionnaire designed to identify and assess ACMs located in residential settings. METHODS: A multidisciplinary team was involved in the formative development and creation of the mobile phone app. The formative development process comprised 6 steps: defining the scope of the app; conducting a comprehensive desktop review by searching online literature databases, as well as a wider online search for gray literature; drafting and revising the content, questionnaire, conditional branching rules, and scoring algorithms; obtaining expert input; manually pretesting the questionnaire; and formulating a final content document to be provided to the software development company. We then constructed ACM Check on the iOS platform for use in a validation study, and then updated the app, replicated it on Android, and released it to the public. RESULTS: The ACM Check app identifies potential ACMs, prioritizes the materials based on their condition and likelihood of disturbance, and generates a summary report for each house assessed. CONCLUSIONS: ACM Check is an initiative to raise community members’ awareness of asbestos in the residential environment and also serves as a data collection tool for epidemiologic research. It can potentially be modified for implementation in other countries or used as the basis for the assessment of other occupational or environmental hazards. JMIR Publications 2017-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6334671/ /pubmed/30684427 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/formative.8370 Text en ©Matthew Hayden Govorko, Lin Fritschi, James White, Alison Reid. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (http://formative.jmir.org), 14.12.2017. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Govorko, Matthew Hayden
Fritschi, Lin
White, James
Reid, Alison
Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title_full Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title_fullStr Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title_full_unstemmed Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title_short Identifying Asbestos-Containing Materials in Homes: Design and Development of the ACM Check Mobile Phone App
title_sort identifying asbestos-containing materials in homes: design and development of the acm check mobile phone app
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6334671/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30684427
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/formative.8370
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