Mobile health (mHealth) apps have great potential to improve health outcomes. Given that mHealth apps have become ubiquitous, there is limited focus on their abandonment. Data concerning crucial metrics, including reasons for adoption and discontinued use, are limited. This study aims to gain broad insights into utilization of mHealth and game-like features promoting user engagement. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 209 mHealth users worldwide. The 17-item survey assessed sociodemographics, as well as the key motivators for mHealth uptake and discontinued use. Our findings show that sports and fitness activity tracking were the most common categories of health apps, with most users engaging with them at least several times a week. Interestingly, the most downloaded mHealth apps among younger adults include MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Nike Run Club, and Samsung Health. Critical drivers of abandonment of mHealth apps were amotivation, loss of interest, and experimenting with different apps to identify the most suitable tool. Additionally, the financial cost of mHealth apps is crucial, with most participants advocating for free or more affordable apps. The study findings suggest that while many individuals utilize mHealth, several factors drive their abandonment. Moreover, data indicate that mHealth developers need to consider gamification strategies to sustain user commitment, as well as psychological variables, such as intrinsic motivation.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, teaching and learning have been forced to move fully to the Internet rather than the conventional offline medium. As a result, the use of M-learning has risen dramatically, which was neither expected or anticipated. The challenges and benefits of such widespread usage are beginning to emerge in front of us. Thus, in this paper, we systematically review the benefits and challenges of leveraging M-learning for Science and Technology courses during the COVID-19 pandemic by educators and learners. Related articles were obtained from various databases, namely, IEEE, ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, and Springer. In total, 4210 related articles were initially found. Upon executing careful selection criteria, 22 articles were selected for review. After that, the advantages and threats were identified and discussed. As per our findings, it was determined that M-learning has excellent potential to be an effective platform for education provided that the identified shortcomings are resolved. This review will be helpful for education stakeholders and institutions to gauge the impact of leveraging M-learning as the only means for education to proceed. Moreover, it reveals the strengths and shortcomings that would aid in adjusting the relevant policies administered by the institutions. Furthermore, application developers will be able to comprehend the expected features that should be included in novel M-learning platforms.

mHealth refers to the emerging mobile communications and network technologies for healthcare. With the penetration of smartphones and tablets, many healthcare apps for self-care have been deployed to cater to the needs of mobile healthcare today. This paper systematically reviews the factors influencing the effective use of mHealth apps for self-care. Prominent factors based on their frequencies of occurrence were identified. Related studies found in different databases such as IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Emerald, and Science Direct were identified for the review. A total of sixty-eight factors were identified and the results show that the following seven factors were seen to appear most frequently: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention, social-influence, self-efficacy, perceived privacy risk and attitude. This review will be useful to healthcare application developers in order for them to recognize the factors which might most influence the intention of consumers to leverage on mHealth apps for self-care.

Designing healthcare systems for the elderly is a challenging endeavour. Telehealth systems are gaining popularity among elderly users, but such applications are mostly doctor-centric and are predominantly used for managing and/or treating diseases instead of preventing them. They do little to motivate patients to change their lifestyle and proactively manage their health. To address these shortcomings, we propose a web-based telehealth system, which uses Web 2.0 technologies in order to add social support and user defined content. In this study, we determine the functional and interface requirements of the system by conducting open individual semi-structured interviews with eight elderly people of age range 60 to 87. A paper prototype and three interfaces of existing Web 2.0 health applications were used to determine the optimum user interface design of the system. A qualitative content analysis was used to evaluate the responses. Overall, the respondents were positive about the idea of using the web to manage their healthcare from home and made several suggestions such as including applications to manage their diet, physiotherapy exercises to improve their health conditions and simple network games to reduce loneliness.

Introduction: Telehealth has been widely promoted as a technology to make healthcare more effective and affordable. However, current telehealth systems suffer from vendor lock-in and high cost, and are designed for managing chronic diseases rather than preventing them. Methods: We address shortcomings of existing consumer-level health informatics applications in supporting senior health consumers, and provide designers of such systems with a design framework. We assess the feasibility of patient-centred health management systems (HMSs) that are designed based on the proposed framework. In contrast to traditional telehealth, HMSs are patient centred and aim at enabling health consumers to take control of their own health by providing functionality for health self-management. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted in evaluating a prototype HMS. Results: Senior healthcare consumers viewed our HMS prototype positively, and experienced a positive change in their attitude towards their health. We identified requirements and challenges for HMSs. In particular, participants indicated that social networking features must have a clear purpose beyond simple broadcasting of emotions and opinions. Discussion: Our study indicates that seniors are able and motivated to leverage a web-based patient-centred HMS, provided that there are suitable health support applications tailored to their needs. This could be achieved by making it attractive for third party application developers to contribute HMS content.

Electronic Government (E-government) refers to the simplification and the transaction of business processes by the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), such as the Internet, to improve public service delivery. The implementation of E-government differs from country to country and is associated with a number of challenges for public administrators. Cloud computing is widely proposed as a solution to enhance the development of E-government. Previously, we have conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to identify essential factors that influence the adoption of cloud computing for E-government implementation in developing countries. In this paper, we present a quantitative study involving 234 IT experts to confirm the significance of the identified factors. SPSS along with AMOS is employed to analyze the data. Confirmatory factor analysis, measurement model and structural model are executed. Findings indicate that the following factors significantly influence the adoption of cloud computing for E-government implementation in Iraq: complexity, compatibility, top management support, relative advantage, IT knowledge and security. The results show that trust and technology readiness have no significant influence on E-government implementation via cloud computing. On a wider perspective, non-technological factors require more attention than technological factors. This review will be useful to decision makers in governments and public sectors that intend to leverage cloud computing to overcome the challenges they face in implementing e-Government successfully.