E-health for people with diabetes : Adoption and use of diabetes self-management applications among diabetics in Bulgaria

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to study the level of understanding of e-health applications among users with diabetes in Bulgaria, to find out how they use those applications, and to provide knowledge on what m-health applications provide to people with diabetes, and what they actually need. This research used TAM variables combined with Innovation Diffusion Theory to produce knowledge on technology acceptance. Therefore, the factors of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability will be used to determine perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavior intention to use a technology. This research was intended to gather information on the use of diabetes self-management mobile apps in a standardized manner. The instrument used for the survey, a questionnaire, aimed to provide information on the use and experience of mobile health apps for managing diabetes. The final online survey was completed by 71 participants, 38 of which were female, 28 were male and 7 were of non-specified gender. The introductory stage of the survey showed that most of the respondents were between the ages of 31 to 40 years old (28.2 %), and that the largest part of the population sample has been diabetic for five years (32.4%). By taking into consideration the results, it can be said that 74.6% of relative advantage correspond to very high perceived usefulness on behalf of the respondents. And a score of 53.5% shows that the people who took part in the survey exhibit high perceived ease of use of the mobile applications.  This concludes that initially upon using diabetes self-management applications, the respondent’s exhibit high behavioral intention to do so and due to that the applications are not defined as complex, they are suitable for constant use.