Leverage User Experience through Social Networking to Improve Health Adherence

Abstract

Patient adherence is an important factor in improving health outcomes. However, as one of the causes of increasing population with chronic diseases, low adherence has become a major health care issue globally. Often, due to deferred benefits of treatment or lifestyle recommendations, many fail to adhere to their treatment regimen or health plans given by care providers until their conditions deteriorate. As poor adherence remains a significant yet inadequately addressed problem of severe health issues, it is critical to create effective interventions as part of the solutions. Previous studies have suggested that peer supports be effective to improve adherence, and social cognitive theories have indicated that personal realization and confidence enhanced through entertaining gaming elements could encourage behavior change. To understand how different motivation factors affect user experience through social networking, a health care adherence website with built-in behavior analyses was constructed to conduct experiments. Users' health adherence levels can be reported to the website and shared among consenting social members for discussion or competition. Key design and development components are illustrated through the case study, including a social gaming and learning portal, an engineering approach to supporting different application scenarios, and information interventions based on predefined rules to achieve effective adherence. The preliminary analysis showed that people using social media for health care adherence may be motivated differently and act strategically during their social interactions.