Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Department of Health Promotion, Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Public Health Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2021 Dec 2;9(12):e27533. doi: 10.2196/27533.
The ubiquity of smartphones and mobile devices in the general population presents an unprecedented opportunity for preventative health. Not surprisingly, the use of electronic health (eHealth) resources accessed through mobile devices in clinical trials is becoming more prevalent; the selection, screening, and collation of quality eHealth resources is necessary to clinical trials using these technologies. However, the constant creation and turnover of new eHealth resources can make this task difficult. Although syntheses of eHealth resources are becoming more common, their methodological and reporting quality require improvement so as to be more accessible to nonexperts. Further, there continues to be significant variation in quality criteria employed for assessment, with no clear method for developing the included criteria. There is currently no single existing framework that addresses all six dimensions of mobile health app quality identified in Agarwal et al's recent scoping review (ie, basic descriptions of the design and usage of the resource; technical features and accessibility; health information quality; usability; evidence of impact; and user engagement and behavior change). In instances where highly systematic tactics are not possible (due to time constraints, cost, or lack of expertise), there may be value in adopting practical and pragmatic approaches to helping researchers and clinicians identify and disseminate e-resources.
The study aimed to create a set of guidelines (ie, a checklist) to aid the members of the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) Canada trial-a preconception randomized controlled clinical trial to prevent child obesity-to assist their efforts in searching, identifying, screening, and including selected eHealth resources for participant use in the study intervention.
A framework for searching, screening, and selecting eHealth resources was adapted from the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) checklist for systematic and scoping reviews to optimize the rigor, clarity, and transparency of the process. Details regarding searching, selecting, extracting, and assessing quality of eHealth resources are described.
This study resulted in the systematic development of a checklist consisting of 12 guiding principles, organized in a chronological versus priority sequence to aid researchers in searching, screening, and assessing the quality of various eHealth resources.
The eHealth Resource Checklist will assist researchers in navigating the eHealth resource space by providing a mechanism to detail their process of developing inclusion criteria, identifying search location, selecting and reviewing evidence, extracting information, evaluating the quality of the evidence, and synthesizing the extracted evidence. The overarching goal of this checklist is to provide researchers or generalists new to the eHealth field with a tool that balances pragmatism with rigor and that helps standardize the process of searching and critiquing digital material-a particularly important aspect given the recent explosion of and reliance on eHealth resources. Moreover, this checklist may be useful to other researchers and practitioners developing similar health interventions.
智能手机和移动设备在普通民众中的普及为预防性健康提供了前所未有的机会。毫不奇怪，通过移动设备访问电子健康（eHealth）资源在临床试验中的使用越来越普遍；为了使用这些技术进行临床试验，有必要选择、筛选和整理高质量的电子健康资源。然而，新的电子健康资源的不断创建和更替可能会使这项任务变得困难。尽管电子健康资源的综合越来越常见，但它们的方法和报告质量需要改进，以便让非专业人士更容易理解。此外，评估中使用的质量标准仍然存在很大差异，并且没有明确的方法来制定纳入的标准。目前，没有一个单一的现有框架可以解决 Agarwal 等人最近的范围综述中确定的移动健康应用程序质量的六个维度（即，资源的设计和使用的基本描述；技术特点和可访问性；健康信息质量；可用性；影响证据；以及用户参与和行为改变）。在由于时间限制、成本或缺乏专业知识而无法使用高度系统的策略的情况下，采用实用和务实的方法帮助研究人员和临床医生识别和传播电子资源可能具有价值。
该研究旨在制定一套指南（即检查表），以帮助加拿大健康生活轨迹倡议（HeLTI）试验的成员，这是一项预防儿童肥胖的孕前随机对照临床试验，以帮助他们搜索、识别、筛选和选择选定的电子健康资源供参与者在研究干预中使用。
从 PRISMA（系统评价和荟萃分析的首选报告项目）检查表中改编了电子健康资源的搜索、筛选和选择框架，以优化该过程的严格性、清晰度和透明度。详细描述了电子健康资源的搜索、选择、提取和质量评估。
本研究系统地制定了一份检查表，其中包含 12 项指导原则，按时间顺序而非优先级顺序排列，以帮助研究人员搜索、筛选和评估各种电子健康资源的质量。
电子健康资源检查表将通过提供一种详细说明制定纳入标准、确定搜索位置、选择和审查证据、提取信息、评估证据质量以及综合提取证据的过程的机制，帮助研究人员在电子健康资源领域中导航。该检查表的总体目标是为新接触电子健康领域的研究人员或通才提供一个工具，该工具将实用性与严谨性相结合，并帮助标准化搜索和批评数字材料的过程——鉴于电子健康资源的最近爆发和依赖，这是一个特别重要的方面。此外，该检查表可能对开发类似健康干预措施的其他研究人员和从业者有用。
