Developing a Thai Massage Mobile Application for the Treatment of Neck and Shoulder Pain to be Used by Thai Traditional Medicine Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to: 1) develop a Thai massage mobile application for treating neck and shoulder pain for undergraduate students in the Thai Traditional Medicine program, and 2) evaluate the efficiency of this mobile application. The development was divided into two phases. The first phase involved studying the basic information necessary for designing the mobile application. Data were collected from documents about principles, concepts, and theories related to mobile applications and Thai massage for treating neck and shoulder pain. The second phase involved designing the mobile application using the ADDIE Model, which was assessed by five experts to meet the efficiency criteria of 80/80. Data were analyzed using the mean, standard deviation, and content analysis.

The results were as follows:

1. The basic information for designing a Thai massage mobile application for treating neck and shoulder pain consisted of five lessons: 1) Anatomy of the Neck and Shoulder, 2) Massage Treatment for Neck Pain and Headaches, 3) Massage Treatment for Neck Pain and Lateral Neck Pain, 4) Massage Treatment for Shoulder Pain, and 5) Self-Massage Treatment for Neck and Shoulder Pain. The application is available on iOS and Android OS systems, allowing students to learn thoroughly. Users can log in by registering as members, ensuring the privacy of personal information and allowing for individual score tracking. The lessons included text, graphics, pictures, animations, and audio.

2. The overall quality assessment by the experts revealed that the quality was at a high level (M = 4.40, S.D. = 0.65), and the efficiency of the application was 80.56/82.41, exceeding the predetermined efficiency criterion of 80/80.