Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Oct 3, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 12, 2021
Intention to Adopt Mobile Health Apps Among Informal Caregivers: Insights from a Cross-Sectional Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Caregiving-related mobile applications (apps) provide a platform to obtain valuable and trusted information, connect easier with other caregivers, monitor medications and manage appointments, and assess care receivers’ health requirements and conditions. Despite the potential benefits of such apps, only a limited number of caregivers actually adopt and use them.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to explore the important factors that affect caregivers’ intention to integrate related mobile applications into their routine caregiving responsibilities.
Methods:
Using a proposed model, we conducted and empirically tested a cross-sectional study among 249 US-based informal caregivers.
Results:
We found that caregivers’ capability and skills to use mobile apps, the app’s effectiveness in responding to the caregivers’ needs, and caregivers’ degree of control over their responsibilities and the decision they make for they care-receivers can predict their willingness to adopt caregiving-related apps. In addition, care-receiver’s severity of health status and vulnerability to unexpected health changes indirectly shape their caregivers’ decision to adopt and use mobile apps for caregiving purposes.
Conclusions:
This study explores the important factors that affect informal caregivers’ intention to adopt related mobile applications into their routine caregiving responsibilities. The results contribute to both mobile health adoption and caregiving literature, and offer significant implications for developers, healthcare practitioners, and policymakers.
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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.