Influencing Factors and Correlations of User Satisfaction with Mobile Health Applications

[Purpose/Significance] Satisfaction is the patient's evaluation and emotional feedback on the entire mobile healthcare experience. Not only does it directly affect the patient's experience, but it also significantly influences user adoption and retention. Therefore, this study aims to explore the influencing factors, hierarchical relationships, and associated pathways of user satisfaction with mobile health applications, and provide scientific evidence and practical recommendations for the healthy development of mobile health applications, thereby promoting the construction of a healthy China and intelligent healthcare. By clarifying the key drivers of user satisfaction and their interactions, the study provides theoretical support for enhancing user experience, optimizing service quality, and increasing user retention. [Method/Process] This study first crawled, cleaned, and filtered negative user review data from mobile health applications, resulting in 539 valid data points after processing. Using the grounded theory, the study extracted factors influencing user satisfaction with mobile health applications by coding the review data. Subsequently, based on the interpretive structural model (ISM), the internal logic and associated pathways between these influencing factors were explored. Finally, the cross-impact matrix multiplication (MICMAC) method was used to examine the dependencies and driving forces among the influencing factors, and to identify the key factors affecting user satisfaction with mobile health applications. [Results/Conclusions] The study found that user satisfaction with mobile health applications is influenced by 23 factors across eight dimensions, including physician service quality, management service quality, system quality, information quality, transaction quality, perceived value, perceived risk, and perceived cost. Perceived cost and perceived risk are key drivers that directly affect user satisfaction. The middle-level factors transmit the effects of the bottom-level factors to the top level, acting as "mediators," and consist of factors from the dimensions of system quality, information quality, perceived value, transaction quality, and perceived risk. The bottom-level factors are the primary driving forces, including the quality of medical service, management service quality, system quality, and information quality. Based on the analysis results, this study proposes the following practical recommendations: strictly review the qualifications of doctors and establish a service quality evaluation mechanism; provide communication training for doctors and simplify medical terminology; add artificial intelligence and human services, and regularly train management service staff; design a simple interface and offer personalized customization; ensure information security and privacy, follow the principle of minimal data collection, and allow users to view and delete their personal information. Subsequent research, based on the expansion of the types of mobile health applications, will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore more deeply the relationships among the various factors that influence user satisfaction.