Smartphone apps for the self-management of low back pain: A systematic review

Abstract

Guidelines for low back pain (LBP) often recommend the use of self-management such as unsupervised exercise, booklets, and online education. Another potentially useful way for patients to self-manage LBP is by using smartphone applications (apps). However, to date, there has been no rigorous evaluation of LBP apps and no guidance for consumers on how to select high-quality, evidence-based apps. This chapter reviews smartphone apps for the self-management of LBP and evaluates their content quality and whether they recommend evidence-based interventions. This chapter shows that generally app developers are selecting interventions that are endorsed by guidelines, although their quality is low. There are many apps available for the self-management of LBP, but their effectiveness in improving patient outcomes has not been rigorously assessed. App developers need to work closely with healthcare professionals, researchers, and patients to ensure app content is accurate, evidence based, and engaging.

Use of Health Apps and Wearable Devices: Survey Among Italian Associations for Patient Advocacy (Preprint)

“…Another study found that 55% of the 325,000 health apps available in the app stores are downloaded less than 5,000 times, and only 2% of all health apps count more than 500,000 monthly active users [7]. Fuller involvement of patients and their associations to identify specific needs could probably narrow this gap and make wearable devices and health apps more appealing and suitable for engagement [25].…”

Mobile Applications for Pain Management: Scoping Review (Preprint)

“…However, the five apps that are unusable due to registration and crashing issues are all free apps, and four apps offering high-quality services (our top 4 apps) are all paid apps; these apps are Conclusions drawn from previous studies [12,13,22,23,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] revealed a wide variation in the quality of pain management apps (functions, interface design, and usability) available in the app stores. We found that there is still a great deal of quality variation in the 15 pain apps that were updated or released within the last year.…”

“…At least 11 review articles have been published evaluating pain management apps since 2011 [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Among them, 3 studies deal with specific forms of pain such as low back pain [21], postoperative pain [24], and pediatric pain [18].…”

Lower back pain app: an exercise programme for the management of low back pain

“…We have recently conducted a systematic review of smartphone apps for the self-management of low back pain 1. Of the 61 included apps, ‘Lower Back Pain App’ had the highest quality score (mean 3.94, range 0–5), as assessed using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) 2.…”