Oral-Hygiene-Related Mobile Apps in the French App Stores: Assessment of Functionality and Quality

Abstract

Mobile health apps can contribute to increased quality of individual oral hygiene behaviors. This study provides an overview and an evaluation of quality of oral-hygiene-related mobile apps currently available in Google Play Store and the French Apple App. A shortlist of nine apps was assessed by 10 oral health professionals using the Mobile App Rating Scale. Intraclass correlation was used to evaluate interrater agreement. Best quality scores were obtained by Oral-B (3.4 ± 0.97), Colgate Connect (3.20 ± 0.63), and Preventeeth (3.10 ± 1.1) and worst ones by Mimizaur se brosse les dents (1.80 ± 0.79) and Kolibree (2.30 ± 0.82). The subjective quality scores ranged from 2.62 ± 0.61 (Oral-B) to 1.5 ± 0.61 (MSD). Specificity of the content ranged from 3.46 ± 0.84 (Preventeeth) to 1.78 ± 0.47 (Mimizaur se brosse les dents). Thus, even if oral health professionals positively evaluated the quality of oral-hygiene-related mobile apps, they are less assertive concerning their impact on the user’s knowledge, attitudes, and intentions to change, as well as the likelihood of actual change in the oral hygiene behavior. Further investigations are needed to assess whether information from these apps is consistent with oral hygiene recommendations and to determine the long-term impacts of these apps.

Mental Health Mobile Apps in the French App Store: Assessment Study of Functionality and Quality

“…In contrast to previous studies on French nutrition-related [38] and oral hygiene-related [39] apps, the star rating score from the iOS and Android stores was always lower than the subjective quality score (section E). This difference may be explained by the fact that, when the mental health apps were evaluated in the stores, they were evaluated by a very small number of evaluators, which is in contrast to the nutrition and oral hygiene apps, which were evaluated by a large number of evaluators.…”

“…Mean score ranged from 2.49 (SD 0.61) to 3.85 (SD 0.48). Similar scores were observed for apps related to nutrition available in France (mean 3.34, SD 0.39 to mean 3.84, SD 0.32) [38] and oral hygiene (mean 1.80, SD 0.79 to mean 3.4, SD 0.97) [39]. Soutien psy avec Mon Sherpa, which obtained the highest score (mean 3.85, SD 0.48), had the particularity of offering real-time interactions with an artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot to collect and record daily mood.…”

“…Information quality (section D) was the weakness of all the apps, except 4 apps (8/12, 67%; Alan Mind: thérapie bien-être, Coach et Moi, goalmap: objectifs bien etre, and Livewell -Your health partner). The weak point of Coach et Moi was the aesthetics (section C), which was not observed for any of the French apps related to nutrition or oral hygiene included in our previous studies [38,39]. The worst score in section D was observed for the credibility of the app because the mental health professionals identified the source of information, but they evaluated that its validity or reliability was questionable (eg, commercial enterprise with vested interest).…”

“…In China, the screening permitted to select 40 apps, but the authors screened the apps in Apple App Store (for iOS apps), Tencent My App, and Huawei App Gallery (for Android apps), and they selected apps in the Chinese language [ 37 ]. In our 2 previous studies using the same methodology but focusing on the risk factors of noncommunicable diseases, 15 apps related to nutrition [ 38 ] and 9 apps related to oral hygiene [ 39 ] were included.…”

“…Third, the commercial use of mobile mental health apps was not considered as a key criterion for assessing the acceptability of the app to users when many mobile apps are developed by anonymous companies but funded by large groups such as pharmaceutical companies. Fourth, MARS was selected for this investigation because it is the most commonly used scale in scientific literature for the assessment of mental health apps [38,39,47,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59], and its use has been recommended by the French High Authority of Health [60]. Nevertheless, other scales, such as ENLIGHT, which also assesses mobile health apps, could have been used [61].…”