Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2016 Aug 9;4(3):e96. doi: 10.2196/mhealth.6020.
For many mental health conditions, mobile health apps offer the ability to deliver information, support, and intervention outside the clinical setting. However, there are difficulties with the use of a commercial app store to distribute health care resources, including turnover of apps, irrelevance of apps, and discordance with evidence-based practice.
The primary aim of this study was to quantify the longevity and rate of turnover of mental health apps within the official Android and iOS app stores. The secondary aim was to quantify the proportion of apps that were clinically relevant and assess whether the longevity of these apps differed from clinically nonrelevant apps. The tertiary aim was to establish the proportion of clinically relevant apps that included claims of clinical effectiveness. We performed additional subgroup analyses using additional data from the app stores, including search result ranking, user ratings, and number of downloads.
We searched iTunes (iOS) and the Google Play (Android) app stores each day over a 9-month period for apps related to depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide. We performed additional app-specific searches if an app no longer appeared within the main search
On the Android platform, 50% of the search results changed after 130 days (depression), 195 days (bipolar disorder), and 115 days (suicide). Search results were more stable on the iOS platform, with 50% of the search results remaining at the end of the study period. Approximately 75% of Android and 90% of iOS apps were still available to download at the end of the study. We identified only 35.3% (347/982) of apps as being clinically relevant for depression, of which 9 (2.6%) claimed clinical effectiveness. Only 3 included a full citation to a published study.
The mental health app environment is volatile, with a clinically relevant app for depression becoming unavailable to download every 2.9 days. This poses challenges for consumers and clinicians seeking relevant and long-term apps, as well as for researchers seeking to evaluate the evidence base for publicly available apps.
对于许多心理健康状况，移动健康应用程序能够在临床环境之外提供信息、支持和干预。然而，在使用商业应用程序商店分发医疗资源方面存在困难，包括应用程序的更替、应用程序的不相关性以及与循证实践的不一致性。
本研究的主要目的是量化官方 Android 和 iOS 应用商店中心理健康应用程序的寿命和更替率。次要目的是量化具有临床相关性的应用程序的比例，并评估这些应用程序的寿命是否与非临床相关应用程序不同。 tertiary 目的是确定具有临床相关性的应用程序中包含临床有效性声明的比例。我们使用来自应用商店的其他数据（包括搜索结果排名、用户评分和下载量）进行了额外的子组分析。
我们在 9 个月的时间内，每天在 iTunes（iOS）和 Google Play（Android）应用商店中搜索与抑郁、双相情感障碍和自杀相关的应用程序。如果某个应用程序不再出现在主搜索结果中，我们会进行额外的特定应用程序搜索。
在 Android 平台上，130 天后（抑郁）、195 天后（双相情感障碍）和 115 天后（自杀），50%的搜索结果发生了变化。在 iOS 平台上，搜索结果更为稳定，研究结束时仍有 50%的搜索结果。研究结束时，大约 75%的 Android 应用程序和 90%的 iOS 应用程序仍可下载。我们仅确定了 982 个应用程序中的 35.3%（347 个）对于抑郁具有临床相关性，其中 9 个（2.6%）声称具有临床效果。只有 3 个包含已发表研究的完整引文。
心理健康应用程序环境变化迅速，每 2.9 天就会有一个针对抑郁的临床相关应用程序无法下载。这给寻求相关且长期应用程序的消费者和临床医生以及寻求评估公共可用应用程序证据基础的研究人员带来了挑战。
