Gao Chenchen, Zhou Lanshu, Liu Zhihui, Wang Haocen, Bowers Barbara
School of Nursing, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.
School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, United States.
Int J Med Inform. 2017 May;101:68-74. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2017.02.005. Epub 2017 Feb 9.
Despite the exponential proliferation of Chinese diabetes applications, none are designed to meet the needs of the largest potential user population. The purpose of this study is to examine the features and contents of Chinese diabetes mobile applications in terms of their suitability for use by older adults with diabetes.
A search of the Apple application store and the 360 Mobile Assistant was conducted to identify Chinese diabetes applications. Next, we compared the features and contents of all the included and most popular diabetes applications with both the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) clinical guideline and recommended usability criteria for older adults respectively.
Seventy-one diabetes apps were randomly selected (from a pool of 552 diabetes apps) and reviewed. The features of most apps failed to include content areas of known importance for managing diabetes in older adults. Usability of all tested applications was rated moderate to good.
Designing maximally effective medical applications would benefit from attention to both usability and content guidelines targeted for the largest potential user population. Despite the preponderance of older adults in the potential user group, failing to consider the relevance of content, in addition to usability for the specific population will ultimately limit the usefulness of the app.
尽管中国糖尿病应用程序呈指数级增长，但没有一款是为满足最大潜在用户群体的需求而设计的。本研究的目的是从适合老年糖尿病患者使用的角度，考察中国糖尿病移动应用程序的功能和内容。
在苹果应用商店和360手机助手进行搜索，以识别中国糖尿病应用程序。接下来，我们分别将所有纳入的及最受欢迎的糖尿病应用程序的功能和内容，与国际糖尿病联盟（IDF）临床指南以及针对老年人推荐的可用性标准进行比较。
从552款糖尿病应用程序中随机抽取71款进行审查。大多数应用程序的功能未涵盖对老年糖尿病患者管理已知重要的内容领域。所有测试应用程序的可用性评级为中等至良好。
设计最有效的医疗应用程序应关注针对最大潜在用户群体的可用性和内容指南。尽管潜在用户群体中老年人占多数，但除了针对特定人群的可用性之外，若不考虑内容的相关性，最终将限制应用程序的实用性。
