Publikationen

Psychoeducation is generally recommended in the treatment of adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but only few studies have systematically assessed the effects of structured clinical psychoeducation. Moreover, although a considerable number of psychoeducational mobile applications exist, none have provided scientific evidence for their effectiveness or safety. Therefore, the present randomized controlled trial investigated a newly developed, free-to-use psychoeducation app for adults with ADHD as a support to a clinical psychoeducation group. 236 adults with ADHD were contacted for study participation, of whom 60 were finally randomized to a psychoeducation group supported either by our developed smartphone app (n = 30) or by traditional pen-and-paper brochures (n = 30). Psychoeducation treatments were conducted in groups of 10, with 8 weekly one-hour sessions between March 2019 and November 2020. Observer-rated ADHD symptom severity (IDA-R interview) was examined as the primary outcome parameter before and after treatment. Across both interventions, ADHD core symptoms were significantly reduced. Notably, the smartphone-assisted psychoeducation was significantly more effective in improving inattention and impulsivity and led to higher homework compliance than the brochure-assisted psychoeducation. No adverse events were reported.

Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) controllers are usually expensive and/or complex to set up. A smartphone as 6DoF controller could be a cost-effective and simple alternative. Within the scope of this research, the application context of medical ultrasound training is addressed, in which the smartphone could be used to control a virtual probe. For this purpose, the difference in rotation and position tracking has been examined between an HTC Vive Tracker as an established reference system and a smartphone using ARCore. Additionally, the usability of the smartphone for controlling a virtual ultrasound probe has been qualitatively evaluated by nine subjects using a simplified test system. ARCore s 6DoF tracking is generally less reliable and accurate than the HTC Vive tracker. However, both the characteristics of the measured tracking errors and the qualitative evaluation show that an ARCore-based 6DoF tracking can be used as a simple and acceptable solution for controlling a virtual ultrasound probe.