Medical Informatics Research Center, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences , Kerman, Iran.
Department of Health Information Management, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences , Tehran, Iran.
Inform Health Soc Care. 2021 Mar 2;46(1):42-55. doi: 10.1080/17538157.2020.1837838. Epub 2020 Nov 9.
The expansion of mobile health apps for the management of COVID-19 grew exponentially in recent months. However, no study has evaluated these apps. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable measure and rate the quality of COVID-19 mobile health apps, to eventually provide a roadmap for future mHealth app development. In this study, we used COVID-related keywords to identify apps for iOS and Android devices. 13 apps (13.5% of the total number of apps identified) were selected for evaluation. App quality was assessed independently using MARS by two reviewers. Search queries yielded a total of 97 potentially relevant apps, of which 13 met our final inclusion criteria. Kendall's coefficient of concordance value for the inter-rater agreement was 0.93 ( = .03). COVID-19 GOV PK app had the highest average MARS score (4.7/5), and all of the apps had acceptable MARS scores (> 3.0). This study suggests that most COVID-related apps meet acceptable criteria for quality, content, or functionality, and they must highlight esthetic and interesting features for overall quality improvement to be welcomed by users.
近几个月来，用于管理 COVID-19 的移动医疗应用程序呈指数级增长。然而，尚无研究对这些应用程序进行评估。本研究旨在开发一种可靠的方法来评估 COVID-19 移动健康应用程序的质量，并最终为未来的移动医疗应用程序开发提供路线图。在本研究中，我们使用与 COVID 相关的关键词来识别 iOS 和 Android 设备上的应用程序。选择了 13 个应用程序（占确定的应用程序总数的 13.5%）进行评估。两名评审员使用 MARS 独立评估应用程序的质量。搜索查询共产生了 97 个潜在相关应用程序，其中 13 个符合我们的最终纳入标准。两位评审员之间的肯德尔协调系数一致性值为 0.93（= 0.03）。COVID-19 GOV PK 应用程序的 MARS 平均得分最高（4.7/5），所有应用程序的 MARS 得分均在可接受范围（>3.0）。本研究表明，大多数与 COVID 相关的应用程序在质量、内容或功能方面都符合可接受的标准，它们必须突出美观和有趣的功能，以提高整体质量，从而受到用户的欢迎。
