Standardized evaluation of the quality and persuasiveness of mobile health applications for diabetes management

Abstract

This study evaluates diabetes self-management mobile health applications available from European app stores with respect to quality, concordance with recommended self-management tasks and implementation of persuasive system design principles. The European Play Store and Apple App Store were systematically searched and relevant apps were tested. Two raters independently assessed app quality using the Mobile Application Rating Scale and conducted a content analysis of provided persuasive system design principles and self-management tasks. A total of 2,269 mobile health applications were identified and 120 could be included in the evaluation. The overall quality was rated as moderate M = 3.20 (SD = 0.39, min = 2.31, max = 4.62), with shortcomings in the subcategories of engagement (M = 2.80, SD = 0.67) and information quality (M = 2.26, SD = 0.48). Scientific evidence is available for 8% of the apps. The reviewed apps implemented a median of three persuasive system design principles (range 0–15) and targeted a median of 4.5 (range 1–8) self-management tasks, however, with a lack of information about psychosocial coping strategies. Most available diabetes self-management apps lack a scientific evidence base. Persuasive system design features are underrepresented and may form a promising tool to improve app quality. Furthermore, the interaction of physical and behavioral health should be improved in existing diabetes self-management mobile health applications.

Quality Assessment and Content Analysis of Persian Mobile Health Applications for Maternity Care on Android Platforms

“…Also, in this study, the user score was correlated with the overall score of MARS as well as the subjective quality score of the MHA, which was in contrast to previous studies that reported no correlation between the MARS score and the user score [24,26,34,35]. Given that users often rely on user ratings when choosing an app to download [22], this is an encouraging nding that there is a correlation between user ratings and MARS ratings for Persian maternity care MHAs.…”

“…We examined the features and quality of the selected MHAs, then obtained the features of MHAs from Frid et al study [18] and other available documents [19][20][21][22]. We categorized them into general features (15 features) and speci c features (14 features) of maternity care MHA.…”

“…The quality of the apps was assessed separately by two health information experts using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), a validated scoring tool [21]. MARS is a multidimensional tool for evaluating the quality of MHAs and has a high level of reliability that has been shown in various studies [22][23][24][25][26][27]. MARS consists of 23 questions in four objectives and one subjective sub-category.…”

Personal Goals, Barriers to Self-Management and Desired mHealth Application Features to Improve Self-Care in Multi-Ethnic Asian Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Qualitative Study

“…To date, several studies have described the needs and preferences of patients with T2DM and factors that could encourage engagement with mHealth apps to support selfmanagement [17,18,23]. For example, people with T2DM would prefer an app to address the practical aspects of diabetes self-management and to reduce the cognitive burden of selfmanagement [24]. However, very few studies have been conducted among patients with T2DM in the context of Asian healthcare and cultural settings.…”

Willingness of diabetes mellitus patients to use mHealth applications and its associated factors for self-care management in a low-income country: an input for digital health implementation

“…Consumers are using mobile health applications more frequently as a result of the global proliferation of mobile device technology. 9 More than 2.5 billion individuals will own smartphones by the year 2019, and by 2017, more than 50% of them will have mobile health applications installed. 10 More than 60% of people in the USA use digital devices and mobile health apps to manage their health.…”