Development and Examination of a Rubric for Evaluating Point-of-Care Medical Applications for Mobile Devices

Abstract

The rapid development and updates of mobile medical resource applications (apps) highlight the need for an evaluation tool to assess the content of these resources. The purpose of the study was to develop and test a new evaluation rubric for medical resource apps. The evaluation rubric was designed using existing literature and through a collaborative effort between a hospital and an academic librarian. Testing found scores ranging from 23% to 88% for the apps. The evaluation rubric proved able to distinguish levels of quality within each content component of the apps, demonstrating potential for standardization of medical resource app evaluations.

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“…Further, there is often an assumption in the literature that clinicians are technologically literate and using published evaluative tools prior to prescription of mHealth apps (Fairburn & Rothwell, 2015;Aungst et al, 2014;Hussain e al., 2015;Donker et al, 2013). Other relevant studies have revealed tools to evaluate mHealth apps are predominantly unknown and underused in clinical practice (Butcher et al, 2015). Only one participant in our study demonstrated knowledge of an mHealth app evaluative process.…”

“…However, due to the disparity between mHealth app deployment and evidence accumulation, reliability of published technological recommendations is suspect (Zapata, Fernández-Alemán, Idri & Toval, 2014;Björk & Solomon, 2013). Despite this, many published evaluative measures, such as Boudreaux et al (2014) and Butcher et al (2015), still include scoping of relevant published literature in their proposed systematic evaluations (Boudreaux et al, 2014;Butcher et al, 2015).…”

“…Due to a lack of clinician knowledge or confidence with regard to technology, and the absence of established pre-publication evaluation criteria, or even adequate and understandable privacy policies, public consumers may be at risk (Butcher et al, 2015;Chan et al, 2015;Murfin, 2013). Indeed, Cummings et al (2013), proposed the rapid proliferation of mHealth apps causes difficulty for health consumers generally in successfully identifying high quality examples.…”

“…Although mHealth apps must meet specific criteria to be sold via application stores (e.g. Google Play, Apple iStore), these criteria are predominantly technological in nature, and do not require medical oversight (Butcher, MacKinnon, Gadd & LeBlanc-Duchin, 2015). Consequently, mHealth apps may lack appropriate content quality and sufficient medical accuracy prior to public availability.…”

“…According to Butcher et al (2015) and Donker et al (2013), clinicians demonstrate poor overall knowledge regarding suitable and safe use of mHealth apps. Butcher and colleagues (2015) stated that of the 77% of nurses and doctors using mHealth apps in the United Kingdom, only 23% conducted an informal evaluation of mHealth suitability prior to use.…”