The incidence of type 1 diabetes is increasing worldwide, especially among children and adolescents, whose parents take responsibility for managing the disease. Despite the many existing mobile applications for managing diabetes, potential users rarely use them. With this master's thesis we want to explore how parents of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes, as well as children and adolescents themselves, can include mobile applications in their everyday practice of managing their disease, and examine which factors play an important role in their acceptance. We conducted eight interviews with parents of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes to understand their daily practice of managing their child’s disease and their attitudes toward mobile applications for type 1 diabetes management. We found that most parents do not use such applications, despite the fact that they often include digital tools that reflect the tasks which are essential for a comprehensive mHealth solution in the field of type 1 diabetes management. The results of the research show that: the most important factor in parents’ acceptance of mobile applications is an appropriate set of functions; sharing application experience among peers is key to initiate using them; and the biggest obstacles are financial, temporal, technical and cognitive aspects of using applications. This research aims to help all stakeholders in designing mobile applications to help manage type 1 diabetes by emphasizing the importance of involving end-users in the development of such mobile applications.
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