Human Agency in Self-Management Tools

Self-management tools are increasingly used to empower patients with chronic conditions to monitor their condition and treatment. As these tools put responsibility with patients, it is important to better understand how patients adopt these tools and how their context influences this adoption. To this end, we study the adoption of a self-management application (HeartMan) for patients with
heart failure. Using a socio-technical framework of non-functional aspects of home-based healthcare technology we aim to integrate their context and the help they receive from informal caregivers. We interviewed 10 patients after using the system. Our results show that although the system increased patients’ knowledge about healthy diet, encouraged them to be more physically active, and made some patients feel more aware of their health, it did not allow for much flexibility regarding the interface and interactions with the system. As such the system exercises agency over the patient rather than empowering them. More flexibility regarding how patients can use the system could empower them to manage their condition and treatment.