The term mHealth is typically defined as the use of mobile information and communication technologies in health care. mHealth used by patients promises to foster patient engagement and ultimately improve patient experience and health outcome.

The effectiveness of mHealth can be increased by personalization. Personalization in general means incorporating information about patient and context into an application. Personalization implies a modification of an application that is aimed at a specific user. Personalization can thus be defined as a “process which changes the functionality, interface, content or distinctiveness of a system to increase its personal relevance”.

Personalization can also be used for mHealth applications to make them more accepted and more effective. mHealth personalization can tailor, for example, the content, timing or visualization of an information or a message to the patient or support individual goal setting. mHealth personalization can be based, e.g., on patient’s socio-demographic data, patient’s health data, preferences of the patient, patient’s digital and health literacy, or environmental sensor data.

While personalization of mHealth applications has been applied for some years, it is still unclear which type of personalization in mHealth applications is most effective in which context to improve user experience and health-related outcomes. It is also unclear how theories of patient engagement or behavior change can be used for planning personalization to make mHealth applications effective and accepted.

This special issue provides a high-quality forum for interdisciplinary researchers to propose novel informatics methods for personalization in mHealth to improve patient experience and health outcomes. Examples of novel informatics approaches in the domain of this special issue can be found on the call for papers wesite. The submitted papers should center around relevant problems experienced in the medical domain and propose innovative approaches (methods) to deal with them. The special issue welcomes high-quality and innovative submissions on a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to):

•Definition, dimensions, types and architectures of personalization

•Theoretical frameworks for personalization of mHealth application (e.g., behavior change theory and patient engagement theory)

•Just-in-time adaptive personalization, patient avatars, personal coaches, gamification

•Personalization, precision medicine, digital therapy and patient-oriented recommendations

•Patient acceptance, digital literacy and health literacy

•Big data, machine learning, simulation and personalization

•User-centred design, usability engineering and personalization

•Ethical and practical challenges of personalization, data privacy

•Impact of mHealth personalization on patient engagement and health outcome

•Systematic reviews on any of these topics

•Innovative examples of mHealth personalization (as short communication)

•Innovative algorithm and approaches for mHealth personalization (as short communication)