Human Factors and Usability in Mobile Health Design – Factors for Sustained Patient Engagement in Diabetes Care

The degree of health care resource consumption within the United States is significant, even with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), with annual expenditures expected to reach 14% of the US gross domestic product by 2016. This suggests the need for population-level solutions that cover the spectrum of both clinical and non-clinical care for the primary prevention of chronic disease, in particular diabetes, which affects over eight percent of the population and costs over $100 billion annually. Over the past decade, there have been an abundance of technological solutions that provide the potential of mitigating the risk issues associated with diabetes and improving self-management practices. One such technology in particular is emerging that may become very important to the delivery of health care: mobile phones. In 2012, a study undertook a comprehensive assessment of the use of mobile health (mHealth) in the management and treatment of diabetes. This study encompassed the review of over 514 articles, as well as series of key informant interviews and site visits, to determine the effectiveness and utility of mHealth in managing and treating diabetes. The research suggested that the usability of mHealth applications could be understood and assessed according to four major factors: user-friendliness, user design, user satisfaction and user confidence. The first two primarily deal with the type of technology and the design of the interface. The last two concern user perception and are crucial in appropriately evaluating how well the application meets a patient’s expectations, which is a critical component of both quality of care and patient outcomes.