Preliminary needs assessment of mobile technology use for healthcare among homeless veterans
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Public Health, Human-Computer Interaction
- Keywords
- health informatics, veterans, homeless persons, mobile phones, access to care, health information technology, vulnerable populations, outreach, engagement in care
- Copyright
- © 2014 McInnes et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Preliminary needs assessment of mobile technology use for healthcare among homeless veterans. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e749v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.749v1
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Homeless veterans have complex healthcare needs, but experience many barriers to treatment engagement. While information technologies (IT), especially mobile phones, are used to engage patients in care, little is known about homeless veterans’ IT use. This study examines homeless veterans’ access to and use of IT, attitudes toward health-related IT use, and barriers to IT in the context of homelessness.
METHODS: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 homeless veterans in different housing programs in Boston, MA. Inductive thematic analysis was used.
RESULTS: Most participants (90%) had a mobile phone and were receptive to IT use for health-related communications. A common difficulty communicating with providers was the lack of a stable mailing address. Some participants were using mobile phones to stay in touch with providers. Participants felt mobile-phone calls or text messages could be used to remind patients of appointments, prescription refills, medication taking, and returning for laboratory results. Mobile phone text messaging was seen as convenient, helped participants stay organized because necessary information was saved in text messages. Some reported concerns about the costs associated with mobile phone use (calls and texting), the potential to be annoyed by too many text messages, and not knowing how to use text messaging.
CONCLUSION: Homeless veterans use IT and welcome its use for health-related purposes. Technology-assisted outreach among this population may lead to improved engagement in care.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.