Mobile Health Application and E-Health Literacy: Opportunities and Concerns for Cancer Patients and Caregivers
Abstract
Health literacy is critical for cancer patients as they must understand complex procedures or treatment options. Caregivers' health literacy also plays a crucial role in caring for cancer patients. Low health literacy is associated with low adherence to medications, poor health status, and increased health care costs. There is a growing interest in the use of mobile health applications (apps) to improve health literacy. Mobile health apps can empower underserved cancer patients and their caregivers by providing features or functionalities to enhance interactive patient-provider communication and to understand medical information more readily. Despite the potentiality of improving health literacy through mobile health apps, there exist several related concerns: no equal access to mobile technology, no familiarity or knowledge of using mobile health apps, and privacy and security concerns. These elements should be taken into account for health policy making and mobile apps design and development. Importantly, mobile apps should be developed with the goal of achieving a high range of user access by considering all health literacy level and various cultural and linguistic needs.
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Animation, text or social media promotion, or apps help patients acquire health information more effectively.
“For example, animation [357,358], text or social media promotion [359,360,361], or apps [362,363] help patients acquire health information more effectively [364].”
From Toward Safer Diagnoses: A SEIPS-Based Narrative Review of Diagnostic Errors (2026) · cites this paper as [362]
Cites
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- Authors
- Kim, H., Goldsmith, J. V., Sengupta, S., Mahmood, A., Powell, M. P., Bhatt, J., Chang, C. F., & Bhuyan, S. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Memphis (US)
- American Hospital Association (US)
- Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bhuyan, Soumitra S.
- Venue
- Journal of Cancer Education
- Published
- 2017-11-14
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 3-8
- ISSN
- 0885-8195 (ISSN-L)
- 1543-0154
- OpenAlex
- W2769152010
- Cited by
- 125
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 5.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Journal of Cancer Education (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Rutgers University Community Repository (Rutgers University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Mobile Learning in Education
- Keywords
- mobile health apps, digital health literacy, cancer patients, cancer caregivers, health literacy, medication adherence, patient-provider communication, digital divide, privacy and security concerns, underserved populations, mobile application design
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Neoplasms, Patients, Caregivers, Telemedicine, Privacy, Health Literacy, Mobile Applications
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