The Mobile App Development and Assessment Guide (MAG): Delphi-Based Validity Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND In recent years, there has been an exponential growth of mHealth-related apps. This has occurred somewhat randomly. Therefore, having a set of criteria that could be used by all stakeholders to guide the development process and the assessment of the quality of the apps is of most importance. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper was to study the validity of the Mobile App Development and Assessment Guide (MAG), a guide recently created to help stakeholders develop and assess mobile health applications. METHODS In order to conduct a comprehensible validation process of the new MAG, we used the Delphi method to reach a consensus among participating stakeholders. We sent participants an online survey and asked them to rate how important they considered each item in the guide to be on a scale from 0 to 10. Two rounds were enough to reach consensus. RESULTS Most items in the guide were found to be important to a quality mobile health-related application. “Privacy”, “Security” and “Usability” were the categories that included most of the important criteria. CONCLUSIONS The data supports the validity of the new MAG. In addition, the findings identified the criteria that stakeholders consider to be most important. The MAG will help advance the field by providing developers, healthcare professionals, and end users with a valid guide so that they can develop and identify mobile health-related apps that are of quality.