TY - JOUR
T1 - A review and content analysis of national apps for COVID-19 management using Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS)
AU - Salehinejad, Simin
AU - Niakan Kalhori, Sharareh R.
AU - Hajesmaeel Gohari, Sadrieh
AU - Bahaadinbeigy, Kambiz
AU - Fatehi, Farhad
PY - 2021/3/2
Y1 - 2021/3/2
N2 - 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 (p = .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.
AB - 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 (p = .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.
KW - COVID-19
KW - evaluation
KW - mHealth
KW - mobile app
KW - mobile health
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095788041&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17538157.2020.1837838
DO - 10.1080/17538157.2020.1837838
M3 - Article
C2 - 33164594
AN - SCOPUS:85095788041
VL - 46
SP - 42
EP - 55
JO - Informatics for Health and Social Care
JF - Informatics for Health and Social Care
SN - 1753-8157
IS - 1
ER -