Mobile apps hold promise for serving as a lifestyle intervention in public health to promote wellness and attenuate chronic conditions, yet little is known about how individuals with chronic illness use or perceive mobile apps.
The objective of this study was to explore behaviors and perceptions about mobile phone-based apps for health among individuals with chronic conditions.
Data were collected from a national cross-sectional survey of 1604 mobile phone users in the United States that assessed mHealth use, beliefs, and preferences. This study examined health app use, reason for download, and perceived efficacy by chronic condition.
Among participants, having between 1 and 5 apps was reported by 38.9% (314/807) of respondents without a condition and by 6.6% (24/364) of respondents with hypertension. Use of health apps was reported 2 times or more per day by 21.3% (172/807) of respondents without a condition, 2.7% (10/364) with hypertension, 13.1% (26/198) with obesity, 12.3% (20/163) with diabetes, 12.0% (32/267) with depression, and 16.6% (53/319) with high cholesterol. Results of the logistic regression did not indicate a significant difference in health app download between individuals with and without chronic conditions (P>.05). Compared with individuals with poor health, health app download was more likely among those with self-reported very good health (odds ratio [OR] 3.80, 95% CI 2.38-6.09, P<.001) and excellent health (OR 4.77, 95% CI 2.70-8.42, P<.001). Similarly, compared with individuals who report never or rarely engaging in physical activity, health app download was more likely among those who report exercise 1 day per week (OR 2.47, 95% CI 1.6-3.83, P<.001), 2 days per week (OR 4.77, 95% CI 3.27-6.94, P<.001), 3 to 4 days per week (OR 5.00, 95% CI 3.52-7.10, P<.001), and 5 to 7 days per week (OR 4.64, 95% CI 3.11-6.92, P<.001). All logistic regression results controlled for age, sex, and race or ethnicity.
Results from this study suggest that individuals with poor self-reported health and low rates of physical activity, arguably those who stand to benefit most from health apps, were least likely to report download and use these health tools.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 36. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 January 2022.
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#1,413,240
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Outputs from JMIR mHealth and uHealth
#179
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#24,627
of 491,869 outputs
Outputs of similar age from JMIR mHealth and uHealth
#6
of 66 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,055 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 66 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
