Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
Iran Helal Institute of Applied-Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran; Research Center for Health Management in Mass Gathering, Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Iran.
Int J Med Inform. 2021 Nov;155:104571. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2021.104571. Epub 2021 Sep 8.
The use of mHealth applications depends on cognitive and social factors of individuals in different nations. This study aimed to identify the factors influencing the use of mHealth applications for both "contact-tracing" and "symptom-monitoring" of COVID-19 among Iranian citizens.
A cross-sectional study with an online survey was conducted among Iranian citizens. Correlation calculation and multiple linear regression analysis were performed on the studied variables to find the effective factors.
A total of 1031 Iranian citizens over the age of 18 participated in this survey. A large percentage of the participants wanted to use the mHealth app to trace contacts of COVID-19 (74.5%) and the mHealth app to identify and monitor COVID-19 symptoms (74.0%). Gender, age, level of education, attitude towards technology, and fear of COVID-19 were among the factors that influenced the intention to use these two apps. The top reasons for using these apps were: "to keep myself and my family safe", "to control the spread of the coronavirus in general", and "to cooperate with healthcare professionals". The reasons given for not using these two apps were related to the issues of "security and privacy" and "doubt in efficiency and usefulness" of them.
The study showed that many participants in this survey were interested in using the COVID-19 apps. Policies, regulations and procedures are needed to protect the privacy of individuals by ensuring data governance. Further investigation with a larger sample is suggested to generalize these results.
在不同国家，移动健康应用的使用取决于个人的认知和社会因素。本研究旨在确定影响伊朗公民使用移动健康应用进行 COVID-19“接触者追踪”和“症状监测”的因素。
采用横断面研究和在线调查的方法，对伊朗公民进行研究。对研究变量进行相关计算和多元线性回归分析，以找出有效因素。
共有 1031 名 18 岁以上的伊朗公民参加了这项调查。很大一部分参与者希望使用移动健康应用程序来追踪 COVID-19 的接触者（74.5%）和移动健康应用程序来识别和监测 COVID-19 症状（74.0%）。性别、年龄、教育程度、对技术的态度以及对 COVID-19 的恐惧是影响使用这两种应用程序意图的因素之一。使用这些应用程序的主要原因是：“保护我自己和我的家人的安全”、“控制冠状病毒的传播”和“与医疗保健专业人员合作”。不使用这两种应用程序的原因与“安全和隐私”以及“对它们的效率和有用性的怀疑”有关。
本研究表明，该调查中的许多参与者对使用 COVID-19 应用程序很感兴趣。需要制定政策、法规和程序，通过确保数据治理来保护个人隐私。建议进行进一步的研究，扩大样本量，以推广这些结果。
