应用商店中可供印度用户使用的心理健康应用程序：系统评价方案

Mental Health Apps Available in App Stores for Indian Users: Protocol for a Systematic Review.

作者信息

Mehrotra Seema, Tripathi Ravikesh, Sengupta Pramita, Karishiddimath Abhishek, Francis Angelina, Sharma Pratiksha, Sudhir Paulomi, Tk Srikanth, Rao Girish N, Sagar Rajesh

机构信息

Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India.

E-Health Research Centre, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, Bengaluru, India.

出版信息

JMIR Res Protoc. 2025 Apr 16;14:e71071. doi: 10.2196/71071.

DOI:10.2196/71071

PMID:40239205

原文链接:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12044312/

Abstract

BACKGROUND

There has been a surge in mental health apps over the past few years. While these have great potential to address the unmet mental health needs of the population, the recent proliferation of mental health apps in the commercial marketplace has raised several concerns, such as privacy, evidence-based, and quality. Although there is mounting research on the effectiveness of mental health apps, the majority of these are not accessible to the public and most of those available have not been researched. Despite the rapid growth of the digital health market in India, there are no comprehensive reviews of publicly available mental health apps for Indian users. Hence it becomes important to review mental health apps freely available to potential end users in terms of their scope, functions, and quality.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to systematically evaluate mental health apps available to Indian users in app stores.

METHODS

This systematic review of mental health apps will be performed following the Target user, Evaluation focus, Connectedness and Health domain approach and the PASSR (Protocol for App Store Systematic Reviews) checklist. Fifteen key search terms covering various mental health conditions and therapies will be used on the Android and iOS stores. The identified apps will be further screened and reviewed based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The pool of eligible apps will be downloaded for detailed review. The following steps will be adopted to streamline the review process and interrater consistency. Six apps will be randomly selected from the downloaded apps, for joint discussion and review by a team of 4 primary reviewers and 2 mentors. Following this, a new set of 6 randomly selected apps will be rated independently by the primary reviewers and the differences in ratings will be jointly discussed for generating consensus. Subsequently, the primary reviewers will individually review the remaining apps in the list. Data will be extracted based on predecided parameters such as privacy policy, basic purpose, type of developer, nature of intervention strategies, and guided versus unguided nature. Additionally, the apps will be reviewed for quality using the Mobile Application Rating Scale. The data analysis and synthesis strategy will incorporate descriptive statistics based on quality evaluation using the Mobile Application Rating Scale and examining the content of the apps for generating descriptive information.

RESULTS

The initial screening of mental health apps available for Indian users on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store was initiated in October 2024. We expect to complete the detailed systematic review by April 2025.

CONCLUSIONS

This study will offer a comprehensive review of mental health apps available in digital marketplaces for Indian users and has implications for end users, policy makers, developers, and mental health professionals.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

International Platform of Registered Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols INPLASY2024100035; https://inplasy.com/inplasy-2024-10-0035/.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/71071.

摘要

背景

在过去几年中，心理健康应用程序激增。虽然这些应用程序在满足人群未得到满足的心理健康需求方面具有巨大潜力，但最近商业市场中心理健康应用程序的激增引发了一些担忧，如隐私、循证性和质量等问题。尽管关于心理健康应用程序有效性的研究越来越多，但其中大多数公众无法获取，而且大多数可用的应用程序尚未经过研究。尽管印度数字健康市场迅速增长，但尚未对面向印度用户的公开可用心理健康应用程序进行全面综述。因此，从潜在最终用户可用的心理健康应用程序的范围、功能和质量方面进行综述变得很重要。

目的

本研究旨在系统评估应用商店中可供印度用户使用的心理健康应用程序。

方法

本项心理健康应用程序的系统综述将按照目标用户、评估重点、关联性和健康领域方法以及PASSR（应用商店系统综述协议）清单进行。将在安卓和iOS应用商店中使用涵盖各种心理健康状况和疗法的15个关键搜索词。根据纳入和排除标准对识别出的应用程序进行进一步筛选和审查。将下载符合条件的应用程序池进行详细审查。将采用以下步骤来简化审查过程并确保评分者间的一致性。将从下载的应用程序中随机选择6个应用程序，由4名主要审查员和2名导师组成的团队进行联合讨论和审查。在此之后，一组新的随机选择的6个应用程序将由主要审查员独立评分，评分差异将进行联合讨论以达成共识。随后，主要审查员将单独审查列表中的其余应用程序。将根据预先确定的参数提取数据，如隐私政策、基本目的、开发者类型、干预策略的性质以及是否有引导等。此外，将使用移动应用程序评分量表对应用程序的质量进行审查。数据分析和综合策略将纳入基于使用移动应用程序评分量表进行质量评估的描述性统计，并检查应用程序的内容以生成描述性信息。