Criteria for Assessing the Quality of Mhealth Apps: A Systematic Review Publisher Pubmed



Nouri R¹ ; Kalhori SRN¹ ; Ghazisaeedi M¹ ; Marchand G² ; Yasini M² Show Affiliations
Source: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Published:2018

Abstract

Received 20 September 2017; Revised 28 March 2018; Editorial Decision 2 April 2018; Accepted 17 April 2018 ABSTRACT Objective: Review the existing studies including an assessment tool/method to assess the quality of mHealth apps; extract their criteria; and provide a classification of the collected criteria. Methods: In accordance with the PRISMA statement, a literature search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBase, ISI and Scopus for English language citations published from January 1, 2008 to December 22, 2016 for studies including tools or methods for quality assessment of mHealth apps. Two researchers screened the titles and abstracts of all retrieved citations against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The full text of relevant papers was then individually examined by the same researchers. A senior researcher resolved eventual disagreements and confirmed the relevance of all included papers. The authors, date of publication, subject fields of target mHealth apps, development method, and assessment criteria were extracted from each paper. The extracted assessment criteria were then reviewed, compared, and classified by an expert panel of two medical informatics specialists and two health information management specialists. Results: Twenty-three papers were included in the review. Thirty-eight main classes of assessment criteria were identified. These were reorganized by expert panel into 7 main classes (Design, Information/Content, Usability, Functionality, Ethical Issues, Security and Privacy, and User-perceived value) with 37 sub-classes of criteria. Conclusions: There is a wide heterogeneity in assessment criteria for mHealth apps. It is necessary to define the exact meanings and degree of distinctness of each criterion. This will help to improve the existing tools and may lead to achieve a better comprehensive mHealth app assessment tool. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.