Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

At a glance: The STEP trials

A round-up of the STEP phase 3 clinical trials evaluating semaglutide for weight loss in people with overweight or obesity.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of Medical Systems
Published in: Journal of Medical Systems 3/2017

01-03-2017 | Mobile & Wireless Health

Seeking Medical Information Using Mobile Apps and the Internet: Are Family Caregivers Different from the General Public?

Authors: Hyunmin Kim, M. Paige Powell, Soumitra S. Bhuyan

Published in: Journal of Medical Systems | Issue 3/2017

Login to get access

Abstract

Family caregivers play an important role to care cancer patients since they exchange medical information with health care providers. However, relatively little is known about how family caregivers seek medical information using mobile apps and the Internet. We examined factors associated with medical information seeking by using mobile apps and the Internet among family caregivers and the general public using data from the 2014 Health Information National Trends Survey 4 Cycle 1. The study sample consisted of 2425 family caregivers and 1252 non-family caregivers (the general public). Guided by Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS), we examined related factors’ impact on two outcome variables for medical information seeking: mobile apps use and Internet use with multivariate logistic regression analyses. We found that online medical information seeking is different between family caregivers and the general public. Overall, the use of the Internet for medical information seeking is more common among family caregivers, while the use of mobile apps is less common among family caregivers compared with the general public. Married family caregivers were less likely to use mobile apps, while family caregivers who would trust cancer information were more likely to use the Internet for medical information seeking as compared to the general public. Medical information seeking behavior among family caregivers can be an important predictor of both their health and the health of their cancer patients. Future research should explore the low usage of mobile health applications among family caregiver population.
Literature
1.
Kim, H., and Xie, B., Health literacy and internet-and mobile app-based health services: a systematic review of the literature. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 52(1):1–4, 2015.
2.
Cline, R.J., and Haynes, K.M., Consumer health information seeking on the internet: the state of the art. Health Education Research. 16(6):671–692, 2001.CrossRefPubMed
3.
Hawkes, C.P., Walsh, B.H., Ryan, C.A., and Dempsey, E.M., Smartphone technology enhances newborn intubation knowledge and performance amongst pediatric trainees. Resuscitation. 84(2):223–226, 2012.CrossRefPubMed
4.
Fox, S., and Duggan, M., Mobile health 2012. Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, DC, 2012.
5.
Wallace, S., Clark, M., and White, J., ‘It’s on my iPhone’: attitudes to the use of mobile computing devices in medical education, a mixed-methods study. BMJ Open. 2(4):e001099, 2012.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
6.
Boulos, M.N., Wheeler, S., Tavares, C., and Jones, R., How smartphones are changing the face of mobile and participatory healthcare: an overview, with example from eCAALYX. Biomedical Engineering Online. 10(24), 2011. doi:10.​1186/​1475-925X-10-24.
7.
Pandey, A., Hasan, S., Dubey, D., and Sarangi, S., Smartphone apps as a source of cancer information: changing trends in health information-seeking behavior. Journal of Cancer Education. 28(1):138–142, 2013.CrossRefPubMed
8.
Cotton, S.R., and Gupta, S.S., Characteristics of online and offline health information seekers and factors that discriminate between them. Social Science & Medicine. 59(9):1795–1806, 2004.CrossRef
9.
Kelly, B., Hornik, R., Romantan, A., Schwartz, J.S., et al., Cancer information scanning and seeking in the general population. Journal of Health Communication. 15(7):734–753, 2010.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
10.
Oh, Y.S., Predictors of self and surrogate online health information seeking in family caregivers to cancer survivors. Social Work in Health Care. 54(10):939–953, 2015.CrossRefPubMed
11.
12.
Knorr, K., Aspinall, D., and Wolters, M. (2015). On the privacy, security and safety of blood pressure and diabetes apps. In: ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (pp. 571–584). Springer International Publishing.
13.
Ranchordas, S., and Kaplan, B. (2016). MHealth for Alzheimer’s disease: Regulation, Consent, and Privacy Concerns. In: Beyond IP: The Future of Privacy (Fordham University Press, 2017), Forthcoming.
14.
15.
Bevan, J.L., and Pecchioni, L.L., Understanding the impact of family caregiver cancer literacy on patient health outcomes. Patient Education and Counseling. 71(3):356–364, 2008.CrossRefPubMed
16.
Matthews, A.K., Sellergren, S.A., Manfredi, C., and Williams, M., Factors influencing medical information seeking among African American cancer patients. Journal of Health Communication. 7(3):205–219, 2002.CrossRefPubMed
17.
Johnson, J.D., and Meischke, H., A comprehensive model of cancer-related information seeking applied to magazines. Human Communication Research. 19(3):343–367, 1993.CrossRef
18.
Pennbridge, J., Moya, R., and Rodrigues, L., Questionnaire survey of California consumers’ use and rating of sources of health care information including the internet. Western Journal of Medicine. 171(5–6):302, 1999.PubMedPubMedCentral
19.
Hesse, B.W., Nelson, D.E., Kreps, G.L., Croyle, R.T., et al., Trust and sources of health information: the impact of the internet and its implications for health care providers: findings from the first health information National Trends Survey. Archives of Internal Medicine. 165(22):2618–2624, 2005.CrossRefPubMed
20.
Johnson, J. D., Cancer-related information seeking: Hampton Press, 1997.
21.
Holden, R.J., and Karsh, B.T., The technology acceptance model: its past and its future in health care. Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 43(1):159–172, 2010.CrossRefPubMed
22.
Zhao, X., and Cai, X., The role of risk, efficacy, and anxiety in smokers’ cancer information seeking. Health Communication. 24(3):259–269, 2009.CrossRefPubMed
23.
24.
Nguyen, G.T., and Bellamy, S.L., Cancer information seeking preferences and experiences: disparities between Asian Americans and whites in the health information National Trends Survey (HINTS). Journal of Health Communication. 11(S1):173–180, 2006.CrossRefPubMed
25.
Bhuyan, S.S., Lu, N., Chandak, A., Kim, H., Wyant, D., Bhatt, J., Kedia, S., and Chang, C.F., Use of mobile health applications for health-seeking behavior among US adults. Journal of Medical Systems. 40(6):1–8, 2016.CrossRef
26.
27.
Zulman, D.M., Piette, J.D., Jenchura, E.C., Asch, S.M., et al., Facilitating out-of-home caregiving through health information technology: survey of informal caregivers’ current practices, interests, and perceived barriers. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 15(7):e123, 2013.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
28.
29.
Chou, W.Y.S., Liu, B., Post, S., and Hesse, B., Health-related internet use among cancer survivors: data from the health information National Trends Survey, 2003–2008. Journal of Cancer Survivorship. 5(3):263–270, 2011.CrossRefPubMed
30.
Oh, Y.S., and Cho, Y., Examining the relationships between resources and online health information seeking among patients with chronic diseases and healthy people. Social Work in Health Care. 54(2):83–100, 2015.CrossRefPubMed
31.
Armstrong, K., Ravenell, K.L., McMurphy, S., and Putt, M., Racial/ethnic differences in physician distrust in the United States. American Journal of Public Health. 97(7):1283–1289, 2007.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
32.
Basch, E.M., Thaler, H.T., Shi, W., Yakren, S., and Schrag, D., Use of information resources by patients with cancer and their companions. Cancer. 100(11):2476–2483, 2004.CrossRefPubMed
33.
Dutta-Bergman, M.J., Primary sources of health information: comparisons in the domain of health attitudes, health cognitions, and health behaviors. Health Communication. 16(3):273–288, 2004.CrossRefPubMed
34.
Pálsdóttir, Á., Information behavior, health self-efficacy beliefs and health behavior in Icelanders’ everyday life. Information Research. 13(1):4, 2008.
35.
Rimal, R.N., Perceived risk and self-efficacy as motivators: understanding individuals’ long-term use of health information. Journal of Communication. 51(4):633–654, 2001.CrossRef
36.
Adhikari, R., Richards, D., and Scott, K., Security and privacy issues related to the use of mobile health apps. In: Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS), 2014.
37.
Gregory-Head, B., Patients and the internet: guidance for evidence-based choices. The Journal of the American College of Dentists. 66(2):46–50, 1998.
38.
Silberg, W.M., Lundberg, G.D., and Musacchio, R.A., Assessing, controlling, and assuring the quality of medical information on the internet: Caveant lector et viewor—let the reader and viewer beware. JAMA. 277(15):1244–1245, 1997.CrossRefPubMed
Metadata
Title
Seeking Medical Information Using Mobile Apps and the Internet: Are Family Caregivers Different from the General Public?
Authors
Hyunmin Kim
M. Paige Powell
Soumitra S. Bhuyan
Publication date
01-03-2017
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Medical Systems / Issue 3/2017
Print ISSN: 0148-5598
Electronic ISSN: 1573-689X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0684-9

Other articles of this Issue 3/2017

Journal of Medical Systems 3/2017 Go to the issue

Systems-Level Quality Improvement

An Integrated Soft Computing Approach to Hughes Syndrome Risk Assessment

Transactional Processing Systems

Privacy-Preserving Integration of Medical Data

Systems-Level Quality Improvement

Selective Search and Intensity Context Based Retina Vessel Image Segmentation

Mobile & Wireless Health

ICASME: An Improved Cloud-Based Authentication Scheme for Medical Environment

Systems-Level Quality Improvement

Identification of Dyslipidemic Patients Attending Primary Care Clinics Using Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Data from the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) Database

Patient Facing Systems

Diagnostic and Prognostic Utility of Non-Invasive Multimodal Imaging in Chronic Wound Monitoring: a Systematic Review