Designing Digital Health Technologies as Persuasive Technologies
A special issue of Information (ISSN 2078-2489). This special issue belongs to the section "Information Systems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 May 2021) | Viewed by 13181
Special Issue Editors
Interests: persuasive technology; personalization; human–computer interaction, user experience; eHealth
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: mHealth; wearable technology; internet of things; public health surveillance
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Digital health technologies are information and communication systems, tools, and processes used for efficient and quality healthcare service delivery. They range from self-monitoring mobile applications (e.g., fitness applications) to contact tracing apps (e.g., exposure notification apps) used by individuals in home and public settings to track their health behaviors and exposures to communicable diseases, respectively. Moreover, in clinical settings, they range from electronic medical record (EMR)/electronic health record (EHR) systems used to improve communication of patient health information among caregivers and physicians to clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) used to assist healthcare providers in making informed decisions and implementing evidence-based clinical guidelines and interventions. Particularly, the COVID-19 pandemic has initiated an explosion of dedicated mobile health applications on the market, such as contact tracing apps, exposure notification apps, social distancing apps, symptom trackers, etc. However, the acceptance and adoption of such technologies, particularly contact tracing and exposure notification apps, have not been very encouraging, partly due to privacy concerns and other application and human-factor design issues. The poor uptake of these mobile applications limits their effectiveness, as research has shown that the more people use them the more likely they are to be effective in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus. In particular, most of the COVID-19 mobile applications on the market, just like most CDSSs, EHRs, and EMRs in clinical settings, have not been intentionally designed to motivate behavior change by incorporating persuasive features, which have the potential to increase their adoption and effectiveness. Incorporating persuasive features into digital health technologies such as contact tracing apps and consumer-facing EHR-integrated web portals has the potential to increase their adoption and promote their effectiveness among the target users. Hence, in this Special Issue, we focus on the intersection of digital health technologies and persuasive technology. The scope and topics of interest of the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Application of persuasive principles in the design of digital health technologies.
- Frameworks and models for designing persuasive digital health technologies.
- Frameworks, models, and tools for evaluating persuasive digital health technologies.
- Tailoring and personalization of persuasive digital health technologies.
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of persuasive digital health technologies.
- Privacy and ethics on the persuasive design of digital health technologies.
- Trust in mobile applications for contact tracing and exposure notification.
- Case studies and examples of personalized digital health technologies.
- Challenges and opportunities for personalizing contact tracing applications.
- Comparisons in the adoption of pandemic-related applications in different regions and countries.
Authors of papers submitted to conferences or workshops should be aware that their final submitted manuscript must provide a minimum of 50% new content. The deadline for submission to this Special Issue is May 28, 2021.
Dr. Kiemute Oyibo
Dr. Plinio Morita
Dr. Julita Vassileva
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- persuasive technology
- personalization
- digital health, eHealth, mhealth, COVID-19 app
- behavior change
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