Empowerment through Mobile Apps: A Mixed Methods Case Study of an Application for Pregnant Women

This article analyses the manner in which mobile health applications contribute to the empowerment of patients. The theoretical background included m-health, user empowerment and value co-creation. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to investigate the representative case study of the Kangaroo application, a free app designed by a health-tech start-up and a reference Brazilian hospital which seeks to make Brazilian women empowered for a healthy pregnancy. The data collection effort comprised application log analysis of 6 months of records of almost one-hundred thousand users, a mobile-based survey with approximately 400 women, and 16 in-depth interviews. The results demonstrated that the app's social features impacted more than personal features. This research's results suggested that the perception of patient empowerment is not greater for the active users of the application, so the patient is not related to 'doing', but rather to 'being able to do'. The participation of specialised professionals, who moderate and interact with the app community, is valued by the users and mentioned as a differential among other health information sources available on the Web. This study was approved by the Brazilian Research Ethics Committee.