Smartphone as a Disease Screening Tool: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Disease screening identifies a disease in an individual/community early to effectively prevent or treat the condition. COVID-19 has restricted hospital visits for screening and other healthcare services resulting in the disruption of screening for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Smartphone technologies, coupled with built-in sensors and wireless technologies, enable the smartphone to function as a disease-screening and monitoring device with negligible additional costs and potentially higher quality results. Thus, we sought to evaluate the use of smartphone applications for disease screening and the acceptability of this technology in the medical and healthcare sectors. We followed a systematic review process using four databases, including Medline Complete, Web of Science, Embase, and Proquest. We included articles published in English examining smartphone application utilisation in disease screening. Further, we presented and discussed the primary outcomes of the research articles and their statistically significant value. The initial search yielded 1046 studies for the initial title and abstract screening. Of the 105 articles eligible for full-text screening, we selected nine studies and discussed them in detail under four main categories: an overview of the literature reviewed, participant characteristics, disease screening, and technology acceptance. According to our objective, we further evaluated the disease-screening approaches and classified them as clinically administered screening (33%, n = 3), health-worker-administered screening (33%, n = 3), and home-based screening (33%, n = 3). Finally, we analysed the technology acceptance among the users and healthcare practitioners. We observed a significant statistical relationship between smartphone applications and standard clinical screening. We also reviewed user acceptance of these smartphone applications. Hence, we set out critical considerations to provide equitable healthcare solutions without barriers when designing, developing, and deploying smartphone solutions. The findings may increase research opportunities for the evaluation of smartphone solutions as valid and reliable screening solutions.

Longitudinal concordance of body composition and anthropometric assessment by a novel smartphone application across a 12-week self-managed weight loss intervention

“…Epidemiologists are becoming increasingly reliant on telehealth and 'mhealth' applications for large populations and the monitoring of at-risk cohorts in remote locations (13) . The accessibility and suitability of the measures from the novel SPA significantly increases the reach of disease and health risk monitoring.…”

“…The SPA in the current study performed well when compared with these costly and widely considered robust systems, potentially paving way for a new standard of digital anthropometry – one that could be made widely available on any smartphone. Epidemiologists are becoming increasingly reliant on telehealth and ‘mhealth’ applications for large populations and the monitoring of at-risk cohorts in remote locations (13) . The accessibility and suitability of the measures from the novel SPA significantly increase the reach of disease and health risk monitoring.…”

“…The findings have varied in support for measuring changes in adiposity and muscle mass, with mean differences (MD) ranging between 2–6 kg for FFM and 2–3 percentage points for BF%. Novel methods of assessment are now available via smartphones, which offer the hardware and processing capabilities to utilise high-grade digital imaging technologies and machine learning models for body shape and composition assessment (13) .…”

Advances in E-Health and Mobile Health Monitoring

“…Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of disease screening using smartphones has been stressed further. The final article [8], by Moses et al, involves a systematic review of the literature to examine the use of mobile apps for disease screening and technology acceptance among the users and healthcare practitioners. The results could inform future research on assessing mobile apps as a reliable screening tool.…”

Diagnostic Ability of a Smartphone App for Dry Eye Disease: Protocol for a Multicenter, Open-Label, Prospective, and Cross-sectional Study

“…Mobile health (mHealth) is defined by the World Health Organization as “medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices” [ 33 ]. The capability of mHealth to digitally perform therapeutic activities has raised the interest of clinicians and providers due to its potential use in disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment through commonplace smart devices [ 32 , 34 - 39 ]. Previous studies concerning the validity and reliability of smartphone-based administration of MBI examinations and OSDI questionnaires yielded a satisfactory result [ 3 , 32 , 40 ].…”