Assessing mHealth Applications for Medical Prescription: A Case Study

Smartphones and mobile health applications could be very helpful to support patients with chronic non communicable disease in following the complex protocols needed to manage their diseases. A number of mobile health applications have been developed to ease self-monitoring of symptoms, vital signs and physical activity; regular medication intake; and education of patients and caregivers about the relevant aspects of the disease. However, several barriers make it difficult to fully exploit their technological potential and produce clear clinical evidence of their effectiveness. App providers do not help users distinguish between useless/dangerous apps and valid solutions. The latter are few and often characterized by rapid obsolescence, lack of interactivity and lack of authoritative information. Then, systematic assessments can help physicians and researchers to rank Apps, support their continuous improvement, find the ‘best candidate for a specific health problem’ in a repeatable manner and pave the way for well-grounded and fruitful discussion on their effectiveness. To this purpose, the authors discuss a flexible method and a supporting tool to assess mobile health application for chronic diseases, based on the Internatinal Measurement System (IMS) scoring system, on the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) and other minor customizations. The method has been co-designed by IT experts, health professional and patients to guarantee the due rigor while including, from the beginning, privacy and confidentiality aspects as well as ease of use, sustainability and significance of results. To exemplify the application of the proposed method, the assessment of a real mobile health application is discussed in the last part of the paper