Mobile health apps to facilitate self-care: a qualitative study of user experiences

Objective: Consumers are living longer, creating more pressure on the health system and increasing their requirement for self-care of chronic conditions. Despite rapidly-increasing numbers of mobile health applications (‘apps’) for consumers’ self-care, there is a paucity of research into consumer engagement with electronic self-monitoring. This paper presents a qualitative exploration of how health consumers use apps for health monitoring, their perceived benefits from use of health apps, and suggestions for improvement of health apps. Materials and Methods: ‘Health app’ was defined as any commercially-available health or fitness app with capacity for self-monitoring. English-speaking consumers aged 18 years and older using any health app for self-monitoring were recruited for interview from the metropolitan area of Perth, Australia. The semi-structured interview guide comprised questions based on the Technology Acceptance Model, Health Information Technology Acceptance Model, and the Mobile Application Rating Scale, and is the only study to do so. These models also facilitated deductive thematic analysis of interview transcripts. Implicit and explicit responses not aligned to these models were analyzed inductively.Results: Twenty-two consumers (15 female, seven male) participated, 13 of whom were aged 26–35 years. Eighteen participants reported on apps used on iPhones. Apps were used to monitor diabetes, asthma, depression, celiac disease, blood pressure, chronic migraine, pain management, menstrual cycle irregularity, and fitness. Most were used approximately weekly for several minutes per session, and prior to meeting initial milestones, with significantly decreased usage thereafter. Deductive and inductive thematic analysis reduced the data to four dominant themes: engagement in use of the app; technical functionality of the app; ease of use and design features; and management of consumers’ data. Conclusions: The semi-structured interviews provided insight into usage, benefits and challenges of health monitoring using apps. Understanding the range of consumer experiences and expectations can inform design of health apps to encourage persistence in self-monitoring

Hybridization and adaptive evolution of diverse Saccharomyces species for cellulosic biofuel production

Additional file 15. Summary of whole genome sequencing statistics

Preparation and characterisation of magnetoresistive materials

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN029973 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Optimal, Environmentally Friendly Departure Procedures for Civil Aircraft

International audienceIn the current aviation context, one of the major concerns of commercial aviation stakeholders is to improve the environmental footprint of aviation. This research, integrated into the European Clean Sky project, addresses the optimization of commercial aircraft departure procedures in order to minimize their environmental footprint. The environmental impact is defined by noise nuisance in the protected zones near airports, local air quality, and global warming. A recent, innovating method is proposed to solve the problem of a real-world aircraft departing from an ideal airport. A multiobjective, constrained, nonlinear optimization problem is formulated to obtain optimal departure procedures. The promising results obtained by the application of this methodology to a theoretical but representative scenario strongly encourage research activities in this direction

Formal and informal contracting processes in the competitive dialogue procedure: a multiple-case study

The competitive dialogue (CD) procedure aims to align the complex demands of principals with possible solutions that contractors have to offer. It is, however, unclear how formal and informal structures and processes in the CD are interrelated and how they determine its effectiveness. The major question in this study is how informal and formal contracting processes differ between projects procured through the CD and comparable projects that are traditionally procured. In a theoretical framework, it is shown that both the negotiations and the commitment stages consist of a formal part (formal bargaining/formal legal contract) and an informal part (informal sense-making/informal psychological contract), and that these dynamically interact as problems of understanding are identified and resolved. These elements and their interactions are studied in four comparable construction projects. The results of this multiple-case study show that commitments and negotiations can substitute for one another, whereas the formal and informal processes within these stages are complementary. Problems of understanding are key in the development of both formal and informal contract