Influencing Factors in Digital Health Intervention Uptake: The Interplay of Education, Lifestyle, and Digital Literacy

Chronic diseases strain global healthcare economically, and integrating digital solutions are proposed to help in meeting the rising demand. Digital health interventions (DHIs) offer promise for personalized, and cost-effective health services, however, factors influencing their uptake remain unclear. We examined whether the probability of lifestyle DHI uptake varies among individuals with different educational levels and lifestyles, based on their attitudes and usage of e-services. We also examined the effect of sex and age, and the association between DHI uptake and both educational attainment and overall lifestyle. A possibility to start using a web-based lifestyle DHI was offered to a subgroup (n = 6978) of Healthy Finland survey participants and adjusted logistic regression models were used to investigate the factors affecting uptake. We found that higher education and healthier lifestyle, as indicated by lifestyle score, were related to higher odds of DHI uptake. However, the effects of age, sex, independence of e-service use, and competence to use online services varied across lifestyle score groups. No significant interactions were observed related to educational attainment. These results imply that lifestyle DHIs are less likely to reach individuals with less-healthy lifestyle habits and lower educational attainment. In addition, some predictors affected the uptake differently across lifestyle score groups, suggesting that implementations of DHIs might attempt strategies to optimize the participation rates in especially targeted subgroups.