Thursday, 10 November, 9AM -10:00AM CET

About Robert Jakob

Robert Jakob is a Ph.D. candidate and doctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Health Interventions at ETH Zurich. Within his Ph.D., he works on user churn prediction and prevention in digital health interventions. Robert holds a master’s degree in Technology and Management from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Before joining ETH Zürich, Robert founded a mobile gaming start-up developing real-time multiplayer games for iOS and Android. His academic work also aims to transfer best practices from the mobile gaming industry to mHealth interventions, especially regarding design principles and mechanics that improve user retention and engagement.

About the Lecture

Digital health interventions (DHIs) show vast potential in supporting patients and healthcare systems with the increasing prevalence and economic costs of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide. However, despite the availability of evidence-based DHIs, many users do not adhere to them as intended and may consequently not receive treatment. Therefore, understanding the factors that act as barriers to or facilitators of adherence is a fundamental concern in preventing intervention dropouts and increasing the effectiveness of DHIs.

This lecture covers factors influencing adherence to DHIs based on a systematic review and the retrospective analysis of three real-world mHealth interventions. The lecturer will unpack which patient attributes predict adherence and which app features or design choices make or break mHealth intervention retention. He will also compare the user journey of health apps with mobile games and outline what we can learn from other industries about increasing user retention in DHIs. Finally, the lecturer will give an outlook on how we may be able to detect and prevent intervention dropouts based on real-time data. In Summary, this lecture aims to help stakeholders of DHIs in developing more compelling and effective mHealth apps.

We are pleased to invite you to join this guest lecture. Registration is not required. Please be aware that we will be recording this guest lecture and will be making it available in our teaching library. If you have any concerns about this, please contact Olivia Keller (olkeller@ethz.ch) prior to the start of the guest lecture.

Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, Associate Professor for Digital Health Interventions, Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich; Director, School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen (HSG); Scientific Director, Centre for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI), ETH Zurich & HSG; Principal Investigator, Future Health Technologies programme, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore

Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch, Professor of Information Management, ETH Zürich; Professor of Technology Management, University of St.Gallen; Advisory Board Member, CDHI, ETH Zürich & University of St.Gallen; Principal Investigator, Future Health Technologies programme, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore

Prof. Dr. Florian von Wangenheim, Professor of Technology Marketing, ETH Zurich & Advisory Board Member, CDHI; Principal Investigator, Future Health Technologies programme, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore

References

Jakob R, Harperink S, Rudolf A, Fleisch E, Haug S, Mair J, Salamanca-Sanabria A, Kowatsch T. 2022. Factors Influencing Adherence to mHealth Apps for Prevention or Management of Noncommunicable Diseases: Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res 2022;24(5):e35371. URL: https://www.jmir.org/2022/5/e35371. DOI: 10.2196/35371

Jakob R, Kowatsch T. Prediction and Prevention of Non-Adherence to Digital Health Interventions. Centre for Digital health Interventions at ETH Zürich. URL: https://www.c4dhi.org/projects/prediction-prevention-non-adherence/