An Evaluation of Interactive mHealth Applications for Adults Living with Cancer

Abstract

This study evaluated the quality and usefulness of interactive mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) for adults with cancer. The PRISMA guidelines were followed to add rigor to the search, as well as to the data collection and analysis. The apps available in the most used app stores (Google Play and Apple) with interactive tailored features were identified. To supplement this, a Google web search was also conducted. The apps were evaluated for their quality using the validated Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) and for their usefulness using a checklist of end users‘ desired features derived from the literature. The searches returned 3046 apps and 17 were retained for evaluation. The average quality score of the apps across the sample was 3.62/5 (SD 0.26, range: 3.14–4.06), with Outcomes4me scoring the highest. On average, the apps scored 50% (SD 2.5, range: 31–88%) on the usefulness checklist, with Cancer.net scoring the highest. The lowest-scoring categories were communications features on the usefulness checklist and “information” on the MARS, indicating areas for future work. The findings identified the apps of an acceptable quality and usefulness that could be recommended to those with cancer.

Is there an app for that?: A Systematic Search and Analysis of mHealth apps in the digital marketplace for pediatric cancer patients (Preprint)

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Digital Therapeutics for Improving Effectiveness of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Biological Products: Preclinical and Clinical Studies Supporting Development of Drug + Digital Combination Therapies for Chronic Diseases

“…For patients and healthcare professionals, the main clinical challenges are treatment adherence, symptom monitoring, symptom management, social support, and self-efficacy. Empowering oncology patients using digital technologies has been recognized as a promising strategy to improve therapy outcomes [98][99][100][101][102][103][104].…”