Effectiveness of Health Mobile Applications in Child Health Care:

Abstract

Worldwide, the use of mobile technologies for health-related activities (Mobile Health) is a new but rapidly progressing as a result of the global access to mobile telephones. The study Assessed effectiveness of health mobile applications in child health care: a case study of Moshi municipality. Specifically the study examined the awareness of community on the use of health mobile applications, the extent to which health mobile applications in child health care is used, socio economic factors which influences the use of health mobile applications in child health care and technological factors that influences the use of health mobile applications in child health care. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design and adopted a mixed research approach. Simple random sampling was used to select the sample population. The sample size of the study was 384 respondents. Questionnaires and structured Interview guide were used to collect data. The collected data were analysed using SPSS computer program. Findings were presented as percentages, means, frequencies, and standard deviations. Results showed that, respondents were aware of the use of health mobile applications, and use health mobile applications for child health care. For example, respondents strongly agreed that, they continue to adopt and use mobile health application and prefer to be offered health services through mobile health applications. More results showed that, socio-economic factors such as gender, age, level of income and occupation affect the use of mobile health application. Furthermore, results showed that, respondents strongly agreed that, health mobile applications are very useful kind of services. For instance, all respondents said the use of mobile health applications assists to get health services more quickly, the use of mobile health application fastens the process of receiving health services, mobile health application simplifies and increases the efficiency of planning on matters of health, mobile health applications are useful in receiving health services and the knowledge of mobile health application has improved family health in the community. The study concluded that, it is necessary to address barriers to mobile health application usage such as high cost, security concerns, and uncertainty. Furthermore, mobile health applications are trustworthy and therefore can be used in respondent’s daily lives. The study recommended that, efforts should be made to educate the people the significance of adopting and using mobile health application provided that, all security features are observed.