JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Despite their prevalence and reported patient interest in use, uptake of health-related applications (apps) is limited. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has developed a variety of mobile and web-based apps to support Veterans; however, uptake remains low nationally.

Objective:

Our objective was to examine factors associated with self-reported VHA health-related app use among US military Veterans.

Methods:

We collected data via a cross-sectional national survey of Veterans and supplemented that data with VHA administrative data. We assessed factors associated with app use using bivariate analyses and multiple logistic regression models.

Results:

We had complete data on 1,259 Veterans. Among them, 47.3% reported having used a VHA health-related app. Respondents reported learning about available VHA health-related apps by reading about them on VHA’s patient portal (37.2%), being told about them by their VHA healthcare team (25.1%), and/or reading about them on VHA’s website (11.0%). Among other significant factors, Veterans who had VHA healthcare team members encourage them to use apps (OR=2.7, 95% CI=2.1-3.4) were more likely to self-report use.

Conclusions:

We found a strong association between healthcare team member encouragement and self-reported app use. Veterans who reported receiving encouragement from their VHA care team members had nearly three times higher odds of using VHA apps than Veterans who did not report receiving such encouragement. Our results add to growing evidence suggesting that endorsement of apps by a healthcare system or healthcare providers can positively impact patient uptake and use, which has implications for future efforts to bolster implementation of these technologies.