Abstract

Smartphones have become the most important commodity for today’s digitalized society. Besides direct interpersonal communication, their most used features are third-party applications (apps). Apps for monitoring health parameters (health apps) are extremely popular, and their users are part of the Quantified Self movement. Little knowledge is available on how health apps are perceived by a female target audience, the Quantified Woman. We conducted a study among Austrian females of reproductive age (n = 150) to analyze prevalence, perceived benefits, and readiness for health app use. In the cross-sectional online German survey, nearly all participants used these apps (98.0%), predominantly for monitoring physical activity and female health (both 31.3%). For the latter, participants used a large variety of different apps for monitoring contraception and menstruation. Perceived benefits and readiness of health app use were only of medium range. Our study assessed aspects of health app use in an understudied segment of the general population. From a Public Health perspective, the Quantified Woman could be empowered by health data collection by enabling her to take active control over how her health graphs develop. We suggest assuring data security and privacy for sensitive female health data collected by health apps.

Highlights

  • In 2020, an estimated amount of 12 billion mobile devices with an economic value of over $4.5 trillion are in circulation [1]

  • The most popular types of health apps were those for monitoring physical activity and female health, both 31.3%, n = 47, sleep and nutrition, and calorie intake (13.3%, n = 20)

  • We found that the socio-demographic factors age and having children showed no significant influence on health app use

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Summary

Introduction

In 2020, an estimated amount of 12 billion mobile devices with an economic value of over $4.5 trillion are in circulation [1]. The omnipresence of smartphones enables almost continuous mobile internet access for all strata of the population. Mobile applications (apps) addressing health and wellness issues (i.e., health apps, in contrast to medical apps that focus on diagnosis and treatment of diseases) offer pleasant gamification experiences and increase health literacy, while fostering national telehealth strategies [4,5,6]. The digital health industry has developed into a serious business: In 2017, as many as 325,000 mobile health apps have been available, and figures are expected to rise continuously [7]. Smartphone users have downloaded at least one health app focusing on various aspects of promoting digital health, some apps serving more than one use [8,9,10,11,12]. The most popular categories of health apps include fitness and nutrition apps, and apps for weight loss coaching, sleep cycle analysis, stress reduction and relaxation, meditation, menstrual period tracking, and pregnancy

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