mHealth4U: designing for health and wellbeing self-management

Many individuals find it difficult to meet their personal health and wellbeing goals. To address this, mobile health (mHealth) apps aimed at improving individuals' diet, physical activity, sleep and mental health, are emerging at an increasing pace. These modern digital health interventions are a promising solution to promote behaviour change and help people maintain better health while controlling rising healthcare expenditures. However, the real-life effects of mHealth apps are often overshadowed by high dropout rates, with the loss of participants during the intervention seeming to be the rule rather than the exception. We designed the mHealth4U model as a sample-based study of user requirement and design preferences to enable more targeted health and wellbeing self-management. This model is aimed at understanding how life-changing digital health interventions can be designed and what software design components might increase consumers' acceptance, adherence and continuous engagement. We put forward three hypotheses in terms of designing an mHealth app that is consumer-centred: consumers prefer (1) self-management mHealth apps that target multiple key health and wellbeing dimensions, (2) intelligent recommendations, and (3) behaviour change support delivered precisely where, when and how it is needed most. We design the mHealth4U model around the 3U cyber security design components (user, usage and usability) and validate the hypotheses through a randomised sampling test with 114 participants. The results of this research will inform the design of a next-generation of digital health interventions capable of supporting the end-users to achieve the healthy lifestyle they deserve.