Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Sep 19, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 21, 2018 - Nov 2, 2018
Date Accepted: Jan 2, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Predictors of Health App Use and Perceived Effectiveness in People with Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes – a Population-based Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health apps can help to change health-related behaviors and manage chronic conditions in patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and diabetes mellitus, but a certain level of health literacy and eHealth literacy may be needed.
Objective:
To predict mobile health app use in individuals with CVD and/or diabetes, and to predict perceived effectiveness of health apps amongst app users.
Methods:
Population-based online survey (N=1500) among Germans, aged 35 years and older with CVD, diabetes or both. Three subgroups were examined: 1) individuals with CVD (n=1325); 2) individuals with diabetes (n=681); and 3) individuals with CVD and diabetes (n=524). Sociodemographics, health behaviors, CVD and/or diabetes, health and eHealth literacy, characteristics of health app use, and characteristics of apps themselves were assessed by questionnaires. Linear and logistic regression models were applied.
Results:
Overall, patterns of factors predicting health app use were comparable in individuals with CVD or diabetes or both. Across subgroups, about every fourth patient reported using apps for health-related purposes with physical activity and weight loss being the most prominent target behaviors. Health app users were younger, more likely to be female (except in those with CVD and diabetes combined), better educated, and reported more physical activity App users had higher eHealth literacy than non-users. Those users who perceived the app to have a greater effectiveness on their health behaviors tended to be more health and eHealth literate and rated the app to use more behavior change techniques (BCTs).
Conclusions:
There are health and literacy-related disparities in the access to health app use. Apps containing more BCTs had higher perceived effect on people’s health and app developers should take the complexity of needs into account. Further, eHealth literacy appears to be a requirement to use health apps successfully, which should be considered in health education strategies to improve health in patients with CVD and diabetes.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.