What is it about?
Digital health technologies such as mobile health apps, patient portals and electronic health records are becoming part of everyday healthcare. However, their adoption remains inconsistent. We reviewed 82 studies to identify the technological, psychological, social, cultural, health-related and environmental factors influencing the adoption of digital health technologies. Five themes were identified: access, equity and affordability; usability, engagement and user empowerment; trust, privacy and governance; integration, workforce and sustainability; and clinical effectiveness and quality of care. The findings highlight the need for an integrated framework that combines multidisciplinary factors to strengthen existing technology adoption models.
Featured Image
Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Existing technology adoption models provide valuable insights into digital health technology adoption, while broader contextual and system-level influences remain inconsistently represented. By integrating multidisciplinary evidence, this review provides a foundation for future model refinement and empirical validation. The findings also provide researchers, healthcare providers, policymakers and developers with insights to support more equitable, scalable and effective digital health technologies.
Perspectives
This review gave me the opportunity to look at digital health technology adoption from a broader multidisciplinary perspective, including technological, psychological, social, cultural, health-related, and environmental factors. I hope it encourages further research that considers not only technological factors, but also the wider influences that shape the adoption and continued use of digital health technologies.
Huey Yu Ng
IMU University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Advancing foundational models in digital health technology adoption: A systematic literature review of multidisciplinary factors, PLOS Digital Health, September 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0001690.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
