With today’s technological advancements, mobile phones and wearable devices have become key building blocks of a smart digital infrastructure. In this paper, we examine emerging mobile health (mHealth) platforms and its health and economic impacts on the outcomes of chronic disease patients. We partnered with a major mHealth firm that provides one of the largest mobile health app platforms in Asia, specializing in diabetes care, together with government authorities specializing in chronic diseases. We designed and implemented a randomized field experiment based on unique observations on blood glucose values and detailed patient health activities (e.g., steps, exercises, sleep, food intake) and app usage logs from diabetes patients. Our main findings show that mHealth technology adoption can lead to a reduction in patients’ blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin levels, hospital visits, and medical expenses of diabetes patients over time. Patients who adopted the mHealth application undertook higher levels of daily exercise, consumed healthier food with lower daily calories, walked more steps and slept for longer times a day. Our findings suggest that mHealth technology can help patients self-regulate their health behavior. This can lead to long-term behavioral modifications towards a healthier dietary and lifestyle, which ultimately leads to an improvement in their health outcomes (e.g., lower glucose values, reductions in hospital visits). Interestingly, we also found personalized messages with patient-specific guidance showed an inadvertent effect on patient app engagement, lifestyle changes, and health improvement. Overall, our findings indicate the potential value of mHealth technologies, as well as the importance of mHealth platform design in achieving better healthcare outcomes.
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