Department of Health Informatics, Faculty of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
Berkeley College, New York, NY, United States.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2021 Mar 2;9(3):e24322. doi: 10.2196/24322.
Mobile phone apps have been leveraged to combat the spread of COVID-19. However, little is known about these technologies' characteristics, technical features, and various applications in health care when responding to this public health crisis. The lack of understanding has led developers and governments to make poor choices about apps' designs, which resulted in creating less useful apps that are overall less appealing to consumers due to their technical flaws.
This review aims to identify, analyze, and categorize health apps related to COVID-19 that are currently available for consumers in app stores; in particular, it focuses on exploring their key technical features and classifying the purposes that these apps were designed to serve.
A review of health apps was conducted using the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines. The Apple Store and Google Play were searched between April 20 and September 11, 2020. An app was included if it was dedicated for this disease and was listed under the health and medical categories in these app stores. The descriptions of these apps were extracted from the apps' web pages and thematically analyzed via open coding to identify both their key technical features and overall purpose. The characteristics of the included apps were summarized and presented with descriptive statistics.
Of the 298 health apps that were initially retrieved, 115 met the inclusion criteria. A total of 29 technical features were found in our sample of apps, which were then categorized into five key purposes of apps related to COVID-19. A total of 77 (67%) apps were developed by governments or national authorities and for the purpose of promoting users to track their personal health (9/29, 31%). Other purposes included raising awareness on how to combat COVID-19 (8/29, 27%), managing exposure to COVID-19 (6/29, 20%), monitoring health by health care professionals (5/29, 17%), and conducting research studies (1/29, 3.5%).
This study provides an overview and taxonomy of the health apps currently available in the market to combat COVID-19 based on their differences in basic technical features and purpose. As most of the apps were provided by governments or national authorities, it indicates the essential role these apps have as tools in public health crisis management. By involving most of the population in self-tracking their personal health and providing them with the technology to self-assess, the role of these apps is deemed to be a key driver for a participatory approach to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Further effort is required from researchers to evaluate these apps' effectiveness and from governmental organizations to increase public awareness of these digital solutions.
移动应用程序已被用于遏制 COVID-19 的传播。然而，在应对这一公共卫生危机时，人们对这些技术的特征、技术特点以及在医疗保健中的各种应用知之甚少。由于缺乏了解，开发者和政府在应用程序的设计上做出了错误的选择，导致创建的应用程序不够有用，由于技术缺陷，对消费者的吸引力总体上降低。
本综述旨在识别、分析和分类目前在应用商店中供消费者使用的与 COVID-19 相关的健康应用程序；特别关注探索它们的关键技术特点，并对这些应用程序的设计目的进行分类。
使用 PRISMA-ScR（系统评价和荟萃分析扩展的首选报告项目，用于范围综述）指南对健康应用程序进行了综述。于 2020 年 4 月 20 日至 9 月 11 日在苹果应用商店和谷歌应用商店进行了检索。如果应用程序是专门针对这种疾病的，并在这些应用商店的健康和医疗类别中列出，则将其纳入。从应用程序的网页中提取这些应用程序的描述，并通过开放式编码进行主题分析，以确定它们的关键技术特点和总体目的。总结了纳入应用程序的特征，并以描述性统计数据呈现。
最初检索到的 298 个健康应用程序中，有 115 个符合纳入标准。在我们的应用程序样本中发现了 29 种技术特点，然后将其分为与 COVID-19 相关的应用程序的五个主要目的。共有 77 个（67%）应用程序由政府或国家当局开发，目的是鼓励用户跟踪个人健康（9/29，31%）。其他目的包括提高对如何抗击 COVID-19 的认识（8/29，27%）、管理接触 COVID-19（6/29，20%）、由医疗保健专业人员监测健康（5/29，17%）和进行研究（1/29，3.5%）。
本研究根据目前市场上用于对抗 COVID-19 的健康应用程序在基本技术特点和目的上的差异，提供了一个概述和分类法。由于大多数应用程序是由政府或国家当局提供的，这表明这些应用程序作为公共卫生危机管理工具的重要作用。通过让大多数人参与自我跟踪个人健康，并为他们提供自我评估的技术，这些应用程序被认为是遏制 COVID-19 传播的参与式方法的关键驱动因素。研究人员需要进一步努力评估这些应用程序的有效性，政府组织需要提高公众对这些数字解决方案的认识。
