Summary

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart arrhythmia. More than 330.000 people in the Netherlands alone have been diagnosed with this disease. People diagnosed with AF are 5 times more likely to suffer from a stroke than people without this heart condition and are more vulnerable to deadly health conditions such as heart failure. Treatments of AF are only effective in some cases, leaving many people untreated. Reasons for the underperformance of treatments are that the root causes of AF are yet to be discovered and expectedly vary per person. Therefore, it’s crucial to move from mass treatment (with partly effective technology and tools) towards tailor-made solutions based on people’s needs.

The aim of this PhD project is to determine how digital marketing approaches can increase awareness and engagement of patients, family members and healthcare professionals in order for them to co-create new AF solutions on an AF collaboration platform. Moreover, the focus of the research lies on understanding, predicting and managing the drivers and consequences of stakeholder activation (patient, health professionals and families) on online-mobile non-profit platforms on AF. The differential impact of various drivers (e.g., marketing related factors, temporal, situational) on outcomes such as awareness, activation, usage/participation intensity and engagement with regard to AF and the AF co-creation platform will play a significant role.