Business Model Strategies in Mobile Health: The Role of In‑App Purchases

Abstract

The health sector, despite fundamental, is currently under significant pressure. The ageing of the population, combined with the growing prevalence of chronic diseases, has intensified burden on healthcare budgets. Simultaneously, the struggle with shortages of qualified professionals and limited resources create additional barriers to delivering effective care. Therefore, health systems face a dual challenge: they must improve efficiency to manage rising costs and ensure long‑term sustainability; but also, they must maintain high standards of quality and equity to satisfy more informed, more demanding, and increasingly involved patients. To address these global pressures, the concept of e‑Health has emerged, driven by the integration of electronic communication and information technologies into healthcare. Advances in digital tools have made health information and services more accessible worldwide, often at significantly lower costs, enabling improved healthcare delivery. Within e-Health, m‑Health has gained prominence. By leveraging mobile technologies, m‑Health has shifted the healthcare paradigm from a reactive model to a more proactive and preventive approach. The widespread adoption of smartphones and wearable devices allows individuals to monitor and manage their health anytime and anywhere, from using apps that track physical activity to devices that monitor vital signs in real time. The increasing use of healthcare-related mobile apps has led to the growth of its market, making it an attractive business for investors. A health app needs a sustainable business model that can generate revenue. Considering that most health apps are free, one of the most important and growing sources of revenue in the e-health market are in-app purchases (IAP). Despite the growing importance of IAP as a revenue source, few studies exist dedicated to this monetization mechanism. This study contributes to fill in this gap and aims to study the factors that explain the use of IAP as a revenue source. Applying probability models to a sample of health apps from Google Play and Apple App Stores, results show that IAP are positively correlated with the use of personal data for micro-segmentation. Also, the presence of IAP is an alternative to payment for downloading, but complementary to ads.