Mobile Health Apps to Facilitate Self-Care: A Qualitative Study of User Experiences

Abstract

ObjectiveConsumers are living longer, creating more pressure on the health system and increasing their requirement for self-care of chronic conditions. Despite rapidly-increasing numbers of mobile health applications (‘apps’) for consumers’ self-care, there is a paucity of research into consumer engagement with electronic self-monitoring. This paper presents a qualitative exploration of how health consumers use apps for health monitoring, their perceived benefits from use of health apps, and suggestions for improvement of health apps.Materials and Methods‘Health app’ was defined as any commercially-available health or fitness app with capacity for self-monitoring. English-speaking consumers aged 18 years and older using any health app for self-monitoring were recruited for interview from the metropolitan area of Perth, Australia. The semi-structured interview guide comprised questions based on the Technology Acceptance Model, Health Information Technology Acceptance Model, and the Mobile Application Rating Scale, and is the only study to do so. These models also facilitated deductive thematic analysis of interview transcripts. Implicit and explicit responses not aligned to these models were analyzed inductively.ResultsTwenty-two consumers (15 female, seven male) participated, 13 of whom were aged 26–35 years. Eighteen participants reported on apps used on iPhones. Apps were used to monitor diabetes, asthma, depression, celiac disease, blood pressure, chronic migraine, pain management, menstrual cycle irregularity, and fitness. Most were used approximately weekly for several minutes per session, and prior to meeting initial milestones, with significantly decreased usage thereafter. Deductive and inductive thematic analysis reduced the data to four dominant themes: engagement in use of the app; technical functionality of the app; ease of use and design features; and management of consumers’ data.ConclusionsThe semi-structured interviews provided insight into usage, benefits and challenges of health monitoring using apps. Understanding the range of consumer experiences and expectations can inform design of health apps to encourage persistence in self-monitoring.

Normative values for a tablet computer-based application to assess chromatic contrast sensitivity

“…Along with these clinical color vision tests, there are other commercially available computer-based tests such as the Cambridge Colour Test (CCT) (Mollon & Regan, 2000), the modified CCT for children (Goulart et al, 2008) Lakshminarayanan, & Bassi, 2005) which do measure color thresholds and may be found in clinics that specialize in color vision. If color threshold measures are to be used as a diagnostic indicator of visual system dysfunction in chronic visual conditions such as DR, AMD, and glaucoma, then it would be beneficial if computer-based tests could be developed to have a simple interface that allows patients to self-administer the tests, and have a small form factor (Anderson, Burford, & Emmerton, 2016). Despite their diagnostic utility, the CCT and CAD tests are not designed for unsupervised selfadministration and their physical dimensions preclude easy portability.…”

“…Despite their diagnostic utility, the CCT and CAD tests are not designed for unsupervised selfadministration and their physical dimensions preclude easy portability. Moreover, self-monitoring requires repeated testing, so it would also be beneficial if such tests were designed to be attractive to maintain the attention and compliance of users (Anderson et al, 2016).…”

Health Care Apps Reported in Newspapers: Content Analysis (Preprint)

“…These health apps are used on mobile phones to track, for example, an individual's heart rate, exercise, weight, food consumption and sleep patterns. Apps have also been used in many research studies to collect data, send patient reminders and to convey educational or motivational messages [7]. Mobile devices and information technology (IT) have therefore been combined to promote healthcare and reinforce disease management.…”

App Chronic Disease Checklist: Protocol to Evaluate Mobile Apps for Chronic Disease Self-Management

“…Engagement with a health app lacking essential operational features, storage and calculation of clinical measures, and unaligned to the consumers’ requirements, can result in declined usage of the app, potentially compromising self-care regimens [10]. …”