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Nudging to Change, the Role of Digital Health

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Digital Health

Part of the book series: Health Informatics ((HI))

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Abstract

The use of nudges, i.e., design changes in the way choices are presented to steer users towards predetermined choices, has dramatically increased over the last few years. These interventions have moved online to become digital and are present across many fields from politics to healthcare. As the use of these mechanisms in healthcare has grown exponentially recently, it is crucial to understand the opportunities they offer and the risks they pose. However, at this stage, such an analysis is lacking. This chapter specifically addresses this issue by (1) analyzing how digital nudges can be applied in the continuum of care and (2) mapping the current empirical research landscape on the topic. To do so, this chapter presents a scoping review of the literature by searching relevant research in the electronic database of JMIR (Journal of Medical Internet Research). The search yielded 150 unique articles, of which 19 articles satisfied the criteria for inclusion in this study. The results indicate that feedback and reminders are the most commonly used digital nudges for behavior change in digital health. Moreover, the results show that most digital nudges research focuses on prevention and the post-acute phase of the continuum of care, with none of the studies investigating nudges for the acute phase. Finally, the results indicate that current empirical research on digital nudging in healthcare rarely discusses ethical considerations.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate the help of Satyam V Purohit for his assistance with screening of the research papers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Aditya Kumar Purohit

  2. University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

    Sofia Schöbel

  3. Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Olivier Bill

  4. University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Adrian Holzer

Authors
  1. Aditya Kumar Purohit
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  2. Sofia Schöbel
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  4. Adrian Holzer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrian Holzer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Design Lab, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Homero Rivas

  2. Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Design Lab, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Thomas Boillat

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Purohit, A.K., Schöbel, S., Bill, O., Holzer, A. (2023). Nudging to Change, the Role of Digital Health . In: Rivas, H., Boillat, T. (eds) Digital Health. Health Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17666-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17666-1_10

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