Health literacy and ehealth tools to improve quality of life

Abstract

Abstract Introdution The use of smartphones and apps to achieve numerous goals, has reached a vast number of citizens today in the world. Health related apps (HAPPS) (estimated to be 318.500 in 2017) have become popular, but little is known about their real impact in public health. The goal of this research is to understand what are the most common used HAPPS, how health literacy (HL) mediates their use and to what extent do they contribute to quality of life. Metods The study is observational, cross-sectional and includes both quantitative and qualitative data from an adult population working in the financial corporation. By the means of a survey (CAWI) data was collected about HL (using the European Health Literacy Survey validated to Portugal ((HLS-EU-PT), the use of apps and their influence on quality of life. The sample (n = 748) includes participants from the different offices of the company in Portugal main land and its autonomous territories. Results In this study (58.7% males) 40% of the individuals have between 36 and 45 years old, and 9.2% refer the use of health promotion apps. Of the participants, 7.1% have inadequate, 39.0% problematic, 36.6% sufficient and 17.3% excellent HL (HLS-EU-PT). Content analysis showed the categories most common in this sample were apps for running 44.9% (58.1% males) and health monitoring 26.1% (with 55.6% males). Those who use apps have a slightly higher value of HL than those who don’t use, but this difference is not statistically significant. Conclusions In this sample not more than 10% of individuals are using apps to promote their wellbeing. Implementing research focusing HL, quality of life and the use of mhealth tools is a new field in public health and allow researchers to identify trends that may trigger strategies to implement health promoting strategies in the work setting. More research is needed to understand how mhealth shape the everyday lives of prosumers in their quest for wellbeing.