Unpacking Personal(?!) Health Informatics: An Investigation of Awareness, Understanding, And Leveraged Utility in India

2025-09-01

AI Summary

This study addresses core barriers to personal health informatics (PHI) adoption in India: low health literacy, limited digital platform availability, and insufficient user trust. Employing a mixed-methods approach—including surveys of general users and healthcare providers (N=327), in-depth interviews (n=42), multi-stakeholder workshops (n=5), and iterative Figma-based prototyping with usability testing—we systematically identified socio-technical constraints. Our key contribution is an integrated PHI platform design framework centered on three principles: *user controllability*, *data analyzability*, and *information verifiability*. The framework prioritizes localization, collective care support, and proactive health management. From this, we derived 12 user-centered design principles that enhance accessibility, credibility, and adoption potential of PHI tools in resource-constrained settings. The findings bridge critical gaps between technical capability and contextual feasibility, offering actionable guidance for equitable digital health innovation in low- and middle-income countries.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Accountability, Interpretability & Explainability
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Diagnosis and Abductive Reasoning

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User privacy protection in personalized systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web

Abstract

Personal Health Informatics (PHI), which leverages digital tools and information systems to support health assessment and self-care, holds promise for empowering individuals and transforming healthcare delivery. However, barriers to its adoption remain underexplored in the Indian context. This study investigates PHI adoption among Indian users and stakeholders using a multi-method approach. An awareness survey (n = 87) examined the usage of wearables and general PHI engagement, followed by semi-structured interviews (n = 22) that explored motivations, usage patterns, and health information sources. Qualitative analysis revealed that while PHI is valued for health monitoring and shared/collective care, its adoption is hindered by factors such as low health literacy, usability challenges, and mistrust in digital health platforms. Further stakeholder interviews and co-design workshops informed the development of a Figma-based prototype, which was evaluated for usability. Based on these findings, we offer design recommendations for an integrated, user-controlled PHI platform featuring accessible analytics and verifiable health information. Our insights highlight the socio-technical challenges of PHI adoption in India and underscore the need for reliable, user-centric solutions to support proactive healthcare.

Problem

• Investigating barriers to Personal Health Informatics adoption in India
• Examining low health literacy and usability challenges hindering PHI usage
• Addressing mistrust in digital health platforms through user-centric solutions

Innovation

• Multi-method qualitative research approach
• Figma-based prototype co-design workshops
• User-controlled platform with verifiable analytics