Previously submitted to: JMIR Formative Research (no longer under consideration since May 19, 2026)
Date Submitted: Nov 23, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Behavior Changes of the Public for Preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections: Survey using a Smartphone-Based App
ABSTRACT
Background:
The prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has recently been expanding in Japan as seen in a rapid increase of patients with STIs. Given recent reports of the usefulness of smartphone-based apps in clinical studies, an STI-related app called STI-OMOIYARI was developed and released to the public for education about the diseases and induction of behavior changes (receiving STI checkups and anti-STI vaccines, and use of condoms) to prevent disease.
Objective:
This study aimed to confirm the effectiveness and practical usefulness of a mobile-based app for data collection and induction of real behavior changes in participants at risk of STIs.
Methods:
All study procedures were conducted via the mobile app. Participants aged ≥ 17 years were registered with a unique identification code after providing an informed consent form and completing baseline information, including an STI check sheet. Six months after registration, a 6-month survey was conducted to examine whether each participant changed behaviors to prevent STIs.
Results:
Of 858 registered participants, 826 were evaluable and analyzed for behavior changes. Overall, 6% (receiving anti-hepatitis A vaccine) to 38% (receiving STI checkup) had already implemented each of the advocated actions at baseline, whereas the others did not and were, therefore, encouraged to take actions (i.e., behavior changes). In the 6-month survey, only ~1-3% of the ‘encouraged’ participants took real actions, although more than 30% intended to undergo an STI checkup and use condoms.
Conclusions:
A smartphone-based app was used to educate the study participants about STIs and encourage them to implement behavior changes to prevent disease. Whereas data collection proceeded well via the app, the 6-month survey showed only a small percentage of the participants actually took action. To better control the prevalence of STIs, it may be necessary for medical care providers to adopt more active approaches, such as face-to-face or video-mediated, rather than web-provided, encouragement to the public. Clinical Trial: None
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