HCI and mobile health interventions

Advances in mobile computing offer the potential to change when, where, and how health interventions are delivered. Rather than relying on occasional in-clinic interactions, mobile health (mHealth) interventions may overcome constraints due to limited clinician time, poor patient adherence, and inability to provide meaningful interventions at the most appropriate time. Technological capability, however, does not equate with user acceptance and adoption. How then can we ensure that mobile technologies for behavior change meet the needs of their target audience? In this paper, we argue that overcoming acceptance and adoption barriers requires interdisciplinary collaborations, bringing together not only technologists and health researchers but also human-computer interaction (HCI) experts. We discuss the value of human-computer interaction research to the nascent field of mHealth and demonstrate how research from HCI can offer complementary insights on the creation of mobile health interventions. We conclude with a discussion of barriers to interdisciplinary collaborations in mobile health and suggest ways to overcome them.