JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The ultimate goal of any prescribed medical therapy is to achieve desired outcomes of patient care. However, patient nonadherence has long been a major problem detrimental to patients’ health and thus is a concern of all healthcare providers. Moreover, nonadherence is extremely costly to global medical systems due to unnecessary complications and expenses. Traditional patient education programs often serve as an intervention tool to increase patients’ self-care awareness, disease knowledge, and motivation to change patient behaviors for better adherence. Patient trust in physicians, patient–physician relationship, and quality of communication have been also identified as critical factors influencing patient adherence. However, little is known about how mobile patient education technologies play a role in improving patient adherence.

Objective:

This study aimed to predict and empirically demonstrate how a mobile patient education system (MPES) juxtaposed to patient trust can increase patients’ adherence with prescribed medical therapies.

Methods:

This study was conducted based on a field survey with 125 patients in multiple states in the United States who have used an innovative mobile healthcare system for their healthcare education and information seeking. Partial Least Squares (PLS) techniques were employed to analyze the collected data.

Results:

The results reveal that patient–physician communication and the use of an MPES significantly increase patients’ trust in their physicians. Furthermore, patient trust has a prominent effect on patient attitude toward treatment adherence, which in turn influences patients’ behavioral intention and actual adherence behavior. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the results also indicate that behavioral intention, response efficacy, and self-efficacy positively influence patients’ actual treatment adherence behavior, whereas description norms and subjective norms do not play a role in this process.

Conclusions:

Our study is one of the first studies that examines the relationship between patients who actively use an MPES and their trust in their physicians. This study contributes to this context by (1) enriching the trust literature by addressing the call for identifying key patient-centered technology determinants of trust, (2) advancing understanding of patient adherence mechanisms, (3) adding a new explanation of the influence of education mechanisms delivered by mobile devices on patient adherence, and (4) confirming that the TPB holds in this patient adherence context. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.