Factors Affecting Medical Students’ Continuance Intention to Use Mobile Health Applications

[The 6th Year of the Study of Human Medicine is Mainly Orientated to Practice: a Pilot Study with a Digital Logbook]

Digital learning resources are in increasing demand, especially in the light of the planned reform of the medical licensing regulations for 2028. In a pilot project, we digitised and evaluated a logbook for students in their practical year (PJ).The aim of this study is to evaluate the digital and non-digital PJ logbooks.Based on a printed PJ logbook, a digital PJ logbook was developed as a web app. The implementation was performed using the commercial enterprise knowledge management system Confluence (Atlassian Corporation, Sydney, Australia), which allows responsive design, integration with the university's user directory, and incorporation of corporate design. Student satisfaction (n = 34) was assessed using questionnaires and a 5-level Likert scale. Additionally, students self-assessed their skills at the beginning and end of the rotation before (n = 49) and after (n = 34) the introduction of the digital logbook by grade points.The majority of students found the digital logbook to be an intuitive and a valuable addition. In the stationary setting, the introduction of the digital logbook led to a significant improvement in self-assessed skills by 0.73 grade points at the beginning (p < 0.001) and 0.78 grade points at the end of the rotation (p < 0.001). In the operating theatre, there was only a significant improvement of 0.47 grade points at the beginning of the rotation (p = 0.027).The evaluation demonstrates that the digital PJ logbook is well-received by students and significantly improves their self-assessed skills. The observed increase in self-assessed skills could be attributed to the introduction of the digital logbook and its contents, although other factors, such as the engagement of the instructors, cannot be excluded. Future modifications are planned to make the logbook more appealing.

Quality factors affecting the continued use of mobile health apps in ethnic minority regions of Southwest China using PLS-SEM and ANN

Mobile technology has significantly accelerated the rapid development of healthcare services. Despite the convenience brought by the proliferation of mobile health (mHealth) apps, the challenge of promoting their continued use among patients has garnered attention from many scholars and administrators. Based on the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM), this study explores the impact of quality elements on the continuance intention of mHealth apps in Southwest China's ethnic minority regions. Researchers conducted a structured questionnaire survey on 337 users of mHealth apps in these regions to measure their self-reported responses to seven constructs: information quality, system quality, service quality, perceived usefulness, confirmation, satisfaction, and continuance intention. The study uses the structural equation model-artificial neural network (SEM-ANN) approach to interpret the compensatory and non-linear relationships between predictors and continuance intention. The findings reveal that user satisfaction and perceived usefulness significantly predict the continuance intention to use mHealth apps. All other relationships were confirmed except for the non-significant relationships between service quality and confirmation, service quality and perceived usefulness, and system quality and perceived usefulness. Furthermore, based on the normalized importance obtained from the multilayer perceptron, the most critical predictors identified were satisfaction (100%), followed by information quality (70.2%), perceived usefulness (43.2%), system quality (25.1%), and confirmation (17.6%). Finally, this study presents theoretical and practical implications for the continuance intention towards mHealth apps in Southwest China's ethnic minority regions.

Willingness to Receive mHealth Messages Among Diabetic Patients at Mizan Tepi University Teaching Hospital: Implications for Digital Health

BACKGROUND

The growing access and use of mobile technology provide new tools for diabetic care and management. Mobile-based technology (mHealth) is considered as a useful tool to deliver healthcare services as a makeshift alternative for consultations and follow-up of diabetic patients. Therefore, this study aimed to scrutinize the willingness to receive mHealth messages and its associated factors among diabetic patients at Mizan Tepi University Teaching Hospital (MTUTH).

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted among two hundred thirty-three diabetic patients. Data were collected using a structured and pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire. Epidata manager and SPSS software were used to enter and analyze the data, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was carried out to identify the independent factors associated with patients' willingness to receive mHealth messages.

RESULTS

Two hundred and thirty-three patients participated in this study with a 95% response rate. Majority of the patients (213, 91.4%) had a mobile phone. Among those who had mobile phones, 59.1%, (95% CI: 48-64) of patients were willing to receive mHealth messages from providers, if they were offered the opportunity. In the multivariable binary logistic regression analysis, monthly income >3000 ETB (AOR = 2.43; 95% CI (1.36-3.81)), owning smartphone (AOR = 3.85; 95% CI (1.67-4.89)), internet access in their mobile phone (AOR = 2.74; 95% CI (1.42-4.61)), perceived usefulness (AOR = 4.66; 95% CI (2.38-6.83)) and perceived ease to use (AOR = 3.87; 95% CI (1.57-5.46)) were identified as significant factors associated with diabetic patients' willingness to receive mHealth messages.

CONCLUSION

A high proportion of patients who had mobile phones were willing to receive mHealth messages. Monthly income, type of mobile phone, access to the internet on the mobile phone, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness were associated with willingness to receive mHealth messages. Therefore, focusing on these factors could provide insight for designing and implementing mHealth messages for diabetic patients.