تقييم استخدام التطبيقات الصحية لمرتادي العيادات الخارجية و مراكز الرعاية الصحية الأولية في مدينة الرياض

Abstract EN

Mobile technology connects patients with health facilities and health care teams.

Hence, smart devices help individuals to monitor their health conditions and manage wellness.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the community in Saudi Arabia found great support from the government in adopting the use of mobile apps including newly launched health apps to manage individuals’ health status.

The purpose of this study is to assess the extent of the society's interest in health apps and which ones are most used.

The study sample consisted of 517 health practitioners and outpatients from King Abdullah Medical City and five primary health care centers in Riyadh.

The descriptive survey method was used in this study.

The results showed a low usage level of health apps and found positive and inverse correlations between gender, age and apps use.

However, the facility and its visitors did not have a significant impact.

The results also identified the most used health apps besides the usage of social applications.

It was revealed that: 97% of the respondents were citizens while only 3% were expats; 70% were females and approximately 30% were males; and 64% used health apps.

On the other hand, 40% of them had their health conditions impacted positively by using health apps, which shows the positive impact of this type of apps in raising awareness of the public towards health promotion.

The community would not pay for health apps as all who responded to the related question stated that they download the free apps and are not interested in the paid-for ones.

Whoever answered the question of searching for health information via internet sources and not via health apps, the two categories were almost equal between those who do on websites and those who do not, but there was no statistically clear difference between them.The study provided several recommendations that would raise the level of awareness of the health status of individual to improve the quality of life.

The researcher also explained that a study like this opens prospects for other studies that would add great value to the use of health apps and enrich the Arabic library with information that would promote the Arab researchers in using health applications.