In the last decade technological innovation has led to an increase in digital health applications. The effectiveness of applications that can digitally monitor health and lifestyle is highest in the group of young people with a high socio-economic status (SES), who are digitally literate. For the large group of people with low social economic status (SES), about 2,5 million people, these applications are difficult to use, whereas it is exactly this group that seems to need them most.
People with low SES have difficulty understanding e-health applications, which explains why these are not accepted and are used insufficiently. These applications often resort to dashboards that display graphics and trendlines which are difficult to interpret for people with low SES. Feedback is often provided in unsuitable wordings and forms at the wrong time. As a result, users are likely to become demotivated by the negative and uninterpretable feedback.
The partners in STUFF-4-Life develop applications that help users increase their independence, that facilitate monitoring and reporting in mental health care, that improve the physical and mental fitness of workers, and that stimulate participation in society through Virtual reality-based training.
In this project we investigate how these applications can be made suitable for people with low SES by providing feedback that is appropriate for this target group. This will make people feel more comfortable with e-health applications and this will in turn contribute to more positive behavioral change. The activities are focused on early detection of acute health problems and on interpretability of insights and results.