Why Patients Stop Using Health Apps: A Study on How Design Affects Long-Term Engagement in Chronic Disease Care

Mobile health (mHealth) apps have been increasingly adopted, which has changed the way chronic diseases are managed by facilitating self, monitoring, health education, and remote patient engagement. Although initially popular, most health apps lose a great number of users over time, thereby limiting their role in the care of chronic diseases. This article focuses on the reasons behind patients' discontinuation of health app usage and the impact of design features on patient engagement over time. A questionnaire survey of chronic disease patients who had experience with health apps was employed to investigate the relationship between application design and continued use empirically. The information was summarized by means of descriptive statistics and charts. The results uncovered that among the factors leading to dropping out were: bad usability, generic experience, too many notifications, lack of trust in privacy, and low perceived utility. The paper argues that making apps more user, centered and targeting user behaviors are measures that can drastically improve long, term engagement with health apps. The article suggests ways in which developers, healthcare workers, and lawmakers can work together to make apps more sustainable and thus raise patient outcomes levels.