Designing a Digital Health Intervention using Protection Motivation Theory: A Design Science Research

Digital health plays a vital role in addressing the needs of communities through health interventions. In recent years, one of the ways to promote positive health outcomes was through mobile health applications (i.e., mHealth apps). The development of mHealth apps was further intensified by the recent pandemic, and the digital health support services offered by these apps to chronic patients are immense even after the pandemic. However, little research provides theoretical guidance on how to design and develop the functionalities of mHealth apps based on existing theories and their constructs. Theory-driven design and development of applications are necessary to guide researchers and practitioners on the process of building health behavior interventions which will also help to understand research challenges across fields. To address this research gap, we designed and developed an mHealth app through the lens of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and tested it with general users and an industry partner in Australia. We followed the design science methodology, and our findings suggest five functionalities (i.e., secure login, awareness and updates, learning resources, recording test results, and social networking and analytics) supported by four user themes (i.e., Mobile App Characteristics, Design and Privacy Issues, Information Archiving, and Information Authentication). From a theoretical perspective, this study extends the PMT by introducing positive and negative aspects to the theoretical constructs of Response Efficacy and Response Cost which is a coping appraisal construct. The study also recommends three design principles to follow for future mHealth apps and present the practical implications of this study using the National Digital Health Strategy.