Barriers to Deploying Diabetes Self-management mHealth Services in the Chinese Market

摘要

Recently, a large number of mobile applications have been developed to address the needs of patients for diabetes self-management mobile health (mHealth) services. Given the explosion of mHealth technology enablers, increasing investment, and more favorable government policies, diabetes self-management mHealth services are generally seen as a promising domain by Chinese investors. However, the meta-analysis described here showed that even large numbers of cases and environmental factors did not result in a massive adoption or deep market penetration. The root causes of this were analyzed and there were five barriers, i.e., human resources, trust from clinical service providers, policies, functionality, and business models, preventing the adoption of this technology. This finding may serve as a reference for future decision-making with regard to the research, development, use, and policy-making related to mobile health services.