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Why Patients Stop Using Health Apps: A Study on How Design Affects Long-Term Engagement in Chronic Disease Care
Subject area: Biological & Medical Sciences · Area of research: Health App User Engagement
Abstract
Mobile health (mHealth) apps have been increasingly adopted, which has changed the way chronic diseases are managed by facilitating self, monitoring, health education, and remote patient engagement. Although initially popular, most health apps lose a great number of users over time, thereby limiting their role in the care of chronic diseases. This article focuses on the reasons behind patients' discontinuation of health app usage and the impact of design features on patient engagement over time. A questionnaire survey of chronic disease patients who had experience with health apps was employed to investigate the relationship between application design and continued use empirically. The information was summarized by means of descriptive statistics and charts. The results uncovered that among the factors leading to dropping out were: bad usability, generic experience, too many notifications, lack of trust in privacy, and low perceived utility. The paper argues that making apps more user, centered and targeting user behaviors are measures that can drastically improve long, term engagement with health apps. The article suggests ways in which developers, healthcare workers, and lawmakers can work together to make apps more sustainable and thus raise patient outcomes levels.
Keywords
Health Apps, mhealth, Chronic Disease, User Engagement, App Design, Patient Adherence
References
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[2] Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage Publications.
[3] George, D., & Mallery, P. (2020). IBM SPSS statistics 26 step by step: A simple guide and reference. Routledge.
[4] Kidman, P. G., Curtis, R. G., Watson, A., et al. (2024). When and why adults abandon lifestyle behavior and mental health mobile applications. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, e39693.
[5] Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019). Research methods for business students (8th ed.). Pearson Education.
[6] Vaghefi, I., & Tulu, B. (2019). The continued use of mobile health applications: Insights from a longitudinal study. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 7(8), e12983.
[7] World Health Organization. (2023). Global report on digital health and chronic disease management. WHO Press.
How to cite this paper
@article{1713874,
author = {Winnie Ibiso Davis},
title = {Why Patients Stop Using Health Apps: A Study on How Design Affects Long-Term Engagement in Chronic Disease Care},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2024},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
pages = {832-839},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1713874.pdf},
abstract = {Mobile health (mHealth) apps have been increasingly adopted, which has changed the way chronic diseases are managed by facilitating self, monitoring, health education, and remote patient engagement. Although initially popular, most health apps lose a great number of users over time, thereby limiting their role in the care of chronic diseases. This article focuses on the reasons behind patients' discontinuation of health app usage and the impact of design features on patient engagement over time. A questionnaire survey of chronic disease patients who had experience with health apps was employed to investigate the relationship between application design and continued use empirically. The information was summarized by means of descriptive statistics and charts. The results uncovered that among the factors leading to dropping out were: bad usability, generic experience, too many notifications, lack of trust in privacy, and low perceived utility. The paper argues that making apps more user, centered and targeting user behaviors are measures that can drastically improve long, term engagement with health apps. The article suggests ways in which developers, healthcare workers, and lawmakers can work together to make apps more sustainable and thus raise patient outcomes levels.},
keywords = {Health Apps, mhealth, Chronic Disease, User Engagement, App Design, Patient Adherence},
month = {July},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV8I1-1713874}
}