Dataset Information

Careful considerations for mHealth app development: lessons learned from QuestExplore.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mobile health (mHealth) applications (app) have proven to be useful in gathering symptom data for a variety of populations living with chronic and serious illnesses. These mHealth tools have been built for a variety of populations but can quickly lose their novelty over time due to the lack of changes and engagement between the mHealth tool and the user. High costs, constantly changing timelines, and difficulties in building compliant data storage systems are some of the reasons why mHealth development and implementation can be a challenge.

Methods

Our team's tool, QuestExplore (QE), was built in collaboration with healthcare providers, child-life specialists, a music therapist, mobile app developers, data specialists, cyber security specialists, researchers, and children living with chronic illnesses alongside their families. Through this process, our team learned various ways to reduce costs, streamline the app development process, and build compliant data storage systems. In addition, our frequent interactions with stakeholders provided us with the ability to continuously make improvements, to build an engaging mHealth app.

Results

Based upon our findings, our team needed to include prompting, condensing, gamification, data visualizations, and an engaging user design in the remodel of QE. Through a three-stage process of redesigning our previous symptom monitoring apps, QE was developed to better communicate between our users and their providers, with the overall hope of improving symptom management of these children.

Conclusions

In the paper, we aim to explain how our team developed QE with feedback from our stakeholders, while also continuously improving our development process through the lessons we gained through the app's development. QE is now being used in both Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will soon be implemented in Amsterdam University Medical Center.

SUBMITTER: Subramaniam A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9343977 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Careful considerations for mHealth app development: lessons learned from QuestExplore.

Subramaniam Arvind A Hensley Elizabeth E Stojancic Rebecca R Vaughn Jacqueline J Shah Nirmish N

mHealth 20220720

<h4>Background</h4>Mobile health (mHealth) applications (app) have proven to be useful in gathering symptom data for a variety of populations living with chronic and serious illnesses. These mHealth tools have been built for a variety of populations but can quickly lose their novelty over time due to the lack of changes and engagement between the mHealth tool and the user. High costs, constantly changing timelines, and difficulties in building compliant data storage systems are some of the reaso ...[more]

PMID: 35928515

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Project description:BACKGROUND:After a mobile health (mHealth) app is created, an important step is to evaluate the usability of the app before it is released to the public. There are multiple ways of conducting a usability study, one of which is collecting target users' feedback with a usability questionnaire. Different groups have used different questionnaires for mHealth app usability evaluation: The commonly used questionnaires are the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ). However, the SUS and PSSUQ were not designed to evaluate the usability of mHealth apps. Self-written questionnaires are also commonly used for evaluation of mHealth app usability but they have not been validated. OBJECTIVE:The goal of this project was to develop and validate a new mHealth app usability questionnaire. METHODS:An mHealth app usability questionnaire (MAUQ) was designed by the research team based on a number of existing questionnaires used in previous mobile app usability studies, especially the well-validated questionnaires. MAUQ, SUS, and PSSUQ were then used to evaluate the usability of two mHealth apps: an interactive mHealth app and a standalone mHealth app. The reliability and validity of the new questionnaire were evaluated. The correlation coefficients among MAUQ, SUS, and PSSUQ were calculated. RESULTS:In this study, 128 study participants provided responses to the questionnaire statements. Psychometric analysis indicated that the MAUQ has three subscales and their internal consistency reliability is high. The relevant subscales correlated well with the subscales of the PSSUQ. The overall scale also strongly correlated with the PSSUQ and SUS. Four versions of the MAUQ were created in relation to the type of app (interactive or standalone) and target user of the app (patient or provider). A website has been created to make it convenient for mHealth app developers to use this new questionnaire in order to assess the usability of their mHealth apps. CONCLUSIONS:The newly created mHealth app usability questionnaire-MAUQ-has the reliability and validity required to assess mHealth app usability.

Project description:The digital health sector is rapidly growing. With only 4% of publishers out of academic settings, it is under-represented in app development. The objective of this study is to assess the current state of app development with a systematic review and a survey within an exemplary academic setting along the following research questions: (Q1) Are software engineering principles sufficiently known in the sports science app development context? (Q2) Is the role of sports scientists in the context of app development sufficiently understood? The systematic review was conducted by two independent reviewers within databases Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. The PICO schema was used to identify the search term. We subtracted information about five main topics: development process, functional requirements and features, security, technology, and dissemination. The survey was developed by a multidisciplinary team and focused on five main topics. Out of 701 matches, 21 were included in the review. The development process was only described in seven studies. Functional requirements and features were considered in 11 studies, security in 3, technology in 13, and dissemination in 12 with varying details. Twelve respondents [mean age 33(7) years, 58% women] replied to the survey. The survey revealed limited knowledge in realization of security measures, underlying technology and source code management, and dissemination. Respondents were able to provide input on development processes as well as functional requirements and features. The involvement of domain experts is given in seven review studies and described in two more. In 50% of survey respondents, the role in app development is defined as a research assistant. We conclude that there is a varying degree of software engineering knowledge in the sports science app development context (Q1). Furthermore, we found that the role of sports scientists within app development is not sufficiently defined (Q2). We present recommendations for improving the success probability and sustainability of app development and give orientation on the potential roles of sports scientists as domain experts. Future research should focus on the generalizability of these findings and the reporting of the app development process.

Dataset Information

Careful considerations for mHealth app development: lessons learned from QuestExplore.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Careful considerations for mHealth app development: lessons learned from QuestExplore.

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