TITLE:
Adopting Health Apps, What’s Hindering Doctors and Patients?
AUTHORS:
Farhang Dehzad, Cokky Hilhorst, Cas de Bie, Eric Claassen
KEYWORDS:
Mobile Health, Adoption Barriers, Health Innovation
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.6 No.16,
September
12,
2014
ABSTRACT: There are
high expectations for Mobile Health to transform health into a sustainable and
prevention-based system. Unfortunately it has not
reached its scale of adoption many had hoped for, due to the existence of
adoption barriers. More insight into these barriers fosters adoption of mHealth
and the innovation it can bring to worldwide healthcare. This
study investigates the main barriers in the adoption of mHealth, their underlying causes
and their breakthrough possibilities. All the data are gathered from an international and
multi-stakeholder point of view. First of all we tried to
identify the main barriers by doing an international literature study. Second
of all we asked Dutch mHealth Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to rank the barriers
to importance. These KOLs were from different stakeholder groups; policy-makers,
users and developers. At last we asked the KOLs in interviews for underlying
causes and breakthrough opportunities of the barriers. Eventually twelve main adoption barriers emerged.
According to literature and to the KOLs the most important barriers are “Integration and interoperability” and “Business case”. An underlying cause for
the barrier “Integration and
interoperability” might be the active closed power system of technology
suppliers, which exists in the Netherlands. Furthermore there seems to be a
difference in the importance of the barriers “Privacy and security” and “Conservative
culture” when perceptions of Dutch KOLS and
international literature are compared. Within the stakeholders-groups, the KOLs
think differently about the importance of the barriers “Visionless development” and “Competing
payment mechanism”. The Dutch healthcare insurers could take a more leading
role in the fragmented landscape of mHealth in the Netherlands, by
strategically funding new initiatives that use open standards and deliver
better value for end-users. Other chances might lie in the international cooperation between countries to
overcome certain barriers.