Relational Agents' (RAs) ability to maintain socio-emotional relationships with users can be an asset to COVID-19 patients. The goal of this research was to identify principles for designing an RA ...that can act as a health professional for a COVID-19 patient. We first identified tasks that such an RA can provide by interviewing 33 individuals, who had recovered from COVID-19. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. Based on the findings, four sets of hypothetical conversations were handcrafted to illustrate how the proposed RA will execute the identified tasks. These conversations were then evaluated by 43 healthcare professionals in a qualitative study. Thematic analysis was again used to identify characteristics that would be suitable for the proposed RA. The results suggest that the RA must: model clinical protocols; incorporate evidence-based interventions; inform, educate, and remind patients; build trusting relationships, and support their socio-emotional needs. The findings have implications for designing RAs for other healthcare contexts beyond the pandemic.
Despite the existence of adequate technological infrastructure and clearer policies, there are situations where users, mainly physicians, resist mobile health (mHealth) solutions. This is of ...particular concern, bearing in mind that several studies, both in developed and developing countries, showed that clinicians' adoption is the most influential factor in such solutions' success.
The aim of this study was to focus on understanding clinicians' roles in the adoption of an oncology decision support app, the factors impacting this adoption, and its implications for organizational and social practices.
A qualitative case study of a decision support app in oncology, called ONCOassist, was conducted. The data were collected through 17 in-depth interviews with clinicians and nurses in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
This case demonstrates the affordances and constraints of mHealth technology at the workplace, its implications for the organization of work, and clinicians' role in its constant development and adoption. The research findings confirmed that factors such as app operation and stability, ease of use, usefulness, cost, and portability play a major role in the adoption decision; however, other social factors such as endorsement, neutrality of the content, attitude toward technology, existing workload, and internal organizational politics are also reported as key determinants of clinicians' adoption. Interoperability and cultural views of mobile usage at work are the key workflow disadvantages, whereas higher efficiency and performance, sharpened practice, and location flexibility are the main workflow advantages.
Several organizational implications emerged, suggesting the need for some actions such as fostering a work culture that embraces new technologies and the creation of new digital roles for clinicians both on the hospitals or clinics and on the development sides but also more collaboration between health care organizations and digital health providers to enable electronic medical record integration and solving of any interoperability issues. From a theoretical perspective, we also suggest the addition of a fourth step to Leonardi's methodological guidance that accounts for user engagement; embedding the users in the continuous design and development processes ensures the understanding of user-specific affordances that can then be made more obvious to other users and increase the potential of such tools to go beyond their technological features and have a higher impact on workflow and the organizing process.
Smartphones have penetrated rapidly and mobile shopping provides promising market opportunities for retailers. However, little is known about mobile shopping patterns and inferring these patterns ...from online shopping may provide misleading insights. We combine mobile log data and a mobile panel survey, and examine two stages in mobile shopping: the possession of shopping applications (hereafter, apps) and the purchase via shopping apps. Our exploratory investigation of mobile data and its empirical analyses provide three substantive findings. First, online experience and mobile experience both positively relate to the possession of shopping apps. Second, browsing behavior for non-shopping apps helps understand the possession of shopping apps as it reflects user preferences for acquiring more apps. Third, purchasing decisions are explained by digital experience (i.e., online experience and mobile experience) and browsing information from shopping apps, with other factors being of little predictive value. The implications for mobile retailing research and practice are discussed.
•Mobile shopping is examined through two stages: app possession and mobile purchase.•Digital experience and the browsing pattern of non-shopping apps are diagnostic of the possession of shopping apps.•Mobile purchases are driven by digital experience and shopping-app browsing, with other factors of little predictive value.•Purchases via online apps are explained by digital experience whereas only mobile experience matters to traditional apps.
Mobile health (mHealth) technologies offer an opportunity to enable the care and support of community-dwelling older adults, however, research examining the use of mHealth in delivering quality of ...life (QoL) improvements in the older population is limited. We developed a tablet application (eSeniorCare) based on the Successful Aging framework and investigated its feasibility among older adults with low socioeconomic status. Twenty five participants (females = 14, mean age = 65 years) used the app to set and track medication intake reminders and health goals, and to play selected casual mobile games for 24 weeks. The Older person QoL and Short Health (SF12v2) surveys were administered before and after the study. The Wilcoxon rank tests were used to determine differences from baseline, and thematic analysis was used to analyze post-study interview data. The improvements in health-related QoL (HRQoL) scores were statistically significant (V=41.5, p=0.005856) across all participants. The frequent eSeniorCare users experienced statistically significant improvements in their physical health (V=13, p=0.04546) and HRQoL (V=7.5, p=0.0050307) scores. Participants reported that the eSeniorCare app motivated timely medication intake and health goals achievement, whereas tablet games promoted mental stimulation. Participants were willing to use mobile apps to self-manage their medications (70%) and adopt healthy activities (72%), while 92% wanted to recommend eSeniorCare to a friend. This study shows the feasibility and possible impact of an mHealth tool on the health-related QoL in older adults with a low socioeconomic status. mHealth support tools and future research to determine their effects are warranted for this population.
Objective: To check the effects of the exercise mobile app with face-to-face and distance supervision on the functional performance, postural balance, and lower limb strength of older ...adults. Methods: This is a protocol of a controlled, randomized, and blind clinical trial in which we will recruit older adults of both genders, who will be randomized into two types of training: a control group (exercises using a mobile app with face-to-face monitoring by the therapist) and an experimental group (exercises with a mobile app without face-to-face monitoring by the therapist). The training will be carried out with the free app "Exercício para idosos", which should be installed on the participants' smartphones. The participants should do the proposed exercises three times a week for eight consecutive weeks. The evaluations will be conducted in person pre-training and after the 12th and 24th sessions. Functional performance, postural balance, and lower limb strength will be assessed. The data in each evaluation will be compared as well as the difference between the groups. It is believed that physical exercise apps for older people will benefit both groups by improving functional capacity, postural balance, and lower limbs of older adults.
Digital tools have the potential to support patient activation and shared decision making in the face of increasing levels of mental health problems in young people. There is a need for feasibility ...trials of digital interventions to determine the usage and acceptability of interventions. In addition, there is a need to determine the ability to recruit and retain research participants to plan rigorous effectiveness trials and, therefore, develop evidence-based recommendations for practice.
This study aimed to determine the feasibility of undertaking a cluster randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of a smartphone app, Power Up, co-designed with young people to support patient activation and shared decision making for mental health.
Overall, 270 young people were screened for participation and 52.5% (142/270) were recruited and completed baseline measures across 8 specialist child mental health services (n=62, mean age 14.66 (SD 1.99) year; 52% 32/62 female) and 2 mainstream secondary schools (n=80; mean age 16.88 SD 0.68 years; 46% 37/80 female). Young people received Power Up in addition to management as usual or received management as usual only. Posttrial interviews were conducted with 11 young people from the intervention arms (specialist services n=6; schools n=5).
Usage data showed that there were an estimated 50 (out of 64) users of Power Up in the intervention arms. Findings from the interviews indicated that young people found Power Up to be acceptable. Young people reported (1) their motivation for use of Power Up, (2) the impact of use, and (3) barriers to use. Out of the 142 recruited participants, 45.0% (64/142) completed follow-up measures, and the approaches to increase retention agreed by the steering group are discussed.
The findings of this study indicate that the app is acceptable, and it is feasible to examine the effectiveness of Power Up in a prospective cluster randomized controlled trial.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02552797; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02552797 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6td6MINP0).
Background Mobile applications (apps) for physical activity are popular and hold promise for promoting behavior change and reducing non-communicable disease risk. App marketing materials describe a ...limited number of behavior change techniques (BCTs), but apps may include unmarketed BCTs, which are important as well. Purpose To characterize the extent to which BCTs have been implemented in apps from a systematic user inspection of apps. Methods Top-ranked physical activity apps (N=100) were identified in November 2013 and analyzed in 2014. BCTs were coded using a contemporary taxonomy following a user inspection of apps. Results Users identified an average of 6.6 BCTs per app and most BCTs in the taxonomy were not represented in any apps. The most common BCTs involved providing social support, information about others’ approval, instructions on how to perform a behavior, demonstrations of the behavior, and feedback on the behavior. A latent class analysis of BCT configurations revealed that apps focused on providing support and feedback as well as support and education. Conclusions Contemporary physical activity apps have implemented a limited number of BCTs and have favored BCTs with a modest evidence base over others with more established evidence of efficacy (e.g., social media integration for providing social support versus active self-monitoring by users). Social support is a ubiquitous feature of contemporary physical activity apps and differences between apps lie primarily in whether the limited BCTs provide education or feedback about physical activity.
Disasters and pandemics pose unique challenges to health care delivery. As health care resources continue to be stretched due to the increasing burden of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ...telemedicine, including tele-education, may be an effective way to rationally allocate medical resources. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a multimodal telemedicine network in Sichuan Province in Western China was activated immediately after the first outbreak in January 2020. The network synergizes a newly established 5G service, a smartphone app, and an existing telemedicine system. Telemedicine was demonstrated to be feasible, acceptable, and effective in Western China, and allowed for significant improvements in health care outcomes. The success of telemedicine here may be a useful reference for other parts of the world.
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