The Need for Quality Assessment of mHealth Interventions

Quality Evaluation Of Mhealth Interventions Targeting Drug-Related Problems

Loy et. al. developed a quality assessment tool for evaluating medical apps that targeted DRPs (Loy, et al., 2016). The quality assessment criteria were developed based on 70 articles from the journal literature and the iMedicalApps website. These criteria were classified into 2 major categories of quality: (i) “appropriateness of the app to serve its intended function”, and (ii) “general quality”. The first category was based on the features of the apps, which could be broadly categorized into 5 categories: monitoring, medication interaction checker, dose calculator, medication information, and medication records. On the other hand, the second category included sections on the reliability, usability, and privacy of apps. The quality assessment tool was developed such that mHealth apps could be rated for their general quality based on a total score of 38 points and assessed for the different features that were listed under the appropriate category. As the number of criteria for each feature varied for different apps, the scores for each section would also vary, and thus the maximum possible score in this section would be different based on the feature(s) evaluated. Table 1 shows the list of criteria for each feature, as well as the general quality criteria used in the quality assessment tool (Loy, et al., 2016).