School of Nursing, Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China; Innovation Team of Health Information Management and Application Research (BYKC201913), Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu 233000, China.
School of Health Management, Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China; Innovation Team of Health Information Management and Application Research (BYKC201913), Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu 233000, China.
Int J Med Inform. 2022 Apr;160:104694. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104694. Epub 2022 Jan 31.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic that has driven the widespread use of applications (apps) for outbreak management in China, but the characteristics and quality of these apps are currently unknown.
The first objective of this study was to investigate the functional characteristics of individual epidemic prevention and control apps in China, and the second objective was to evaluate the quality of these apps.
We searched the Qimai mobile application data analysis platform and the Aladdin WeChat applet data analysis platform with keywords and quantified the search results based on the search index, relevance, and the Aladdin index to identify apps with high public popularity. The quality of the apps was rated by 2 independent raters using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between raters was used as a measure of interrater reliability.
All 20 of the included apps had acceptable quality. Functionality had the highest score, followed by information quality, aesthetics, and engagement. There were no significant differences between the independent apps and WeChat applets in app quality (t = 1.907, p = 0.073) and subjective quality (t = 0.899, p = 0.381). These apps were related to COVID-19 individual prevention and control, and the functional features that contributed to the quality of the apps were grouped into six categories, i.e., health self-checking and reporting, news about COVID-19, scientific publicity and education, telemedicine services, personal travel inquiries, and digital contact tracing.
Individual COVID-19 prevention and control apps in China were developed by adding epidemic prevention and control functions to existing social apps rather than independently developing apps. The overall quality of such apps was acceptable, but scores in the engagement section were generally low, especially for WeChat applets.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）引发了全球大流行，推动了中国广泛应用应用程序（apps）进行疫情管理，但这些应用程序的特点和质量目前尚不清楚。
本研究的首要目的是调查中国个体疫病防控应用程序的功能特征，其次是评估这些应用程序的质量。
我们使用关键词在奇迈移动应用数据分析平台和阿拉丁微信小程序数据分析平台进行搜索，并根据搜索索引、相关性和阿拉丁指数对搜索结果进行量化，以确定具有高公众知名度的应用程序。两位独立评估者使用移动应用程序评分量表（MARS）对应用程序的质量进行评分。评估者之间的组内相关系数（ICC）用于衡量评估者之间的可靠性。
所有 20 个纳入的应用程序的质量都可以接受。功能得分最高，其次是信息质量、美观度和参与度。独立应用程序和微信小程序在应用程序质量（t=1.907，p=0.073）和主观质量（t=0.899，p=0.381）方面没有显著差异。这些应用程序与 COVID-19 个体防控相关，有助于提高应用程序质量的功能特征分为六大类，即健康自查和报告、COVID-19 新闻、科学宣传和教育、远程医疗服务、个人旅行查询和数字接触追踪。
中国个体 COVID-19 防控应用程序是在现有社交应用程序中添加防控功能开发的，而不是独立开发应用程序。此类应用程序的整体质量可以接受，但参与度部分的得分普遍较低，尤其是微信小程序。
