Clarifying the Concepts of Personalization and Tailoring of eHealth Technologies: Multimethod Qualitative Study

Tailoring and personalization are multidimensional concepts, and variability and technology affordances seem to determine whether and how personalization and tailoring should be applied to eHealth technologies. On the basis of our findings, tailoring and personalization can be differentiated by the way that segmentations and adaptations are matched. Tailoring matches segmentations and adaptations based on general group characteristics using if-then algorithms, whereas personalization involves the direct insertion of user information (such as name) or adaptations based on individual-level inferences. We argue that future research should focus on how inferences can be made at the individual level to further develop the field of personalized eHealth.