1. A review and content analysis of national apps for COVID-19 management using Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS).
- Author
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Salehinejad, Simin, Niakan Kalhori, Sharareh R., Hajesmaeel Gohari, Sadrieh, Bahaadinbeigy, Kambiz, and Fatehi, Farhad
- Subjects
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COVID-19 , *MOBILE apps , *MOBILE health , *QUALITY of service , *CONTENT analysis - Abstract
The expansion of mobile health apps for the management of COVID-19 grew exponentially in recent months. However, no study has evaluated these apps. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable measure and rate the quality of COVID-19 mobile health apps, to eventually provide a roadmap for future mHealth app development. In this study, we used COVID-related keywords to identify apps for iOS and Android devices. 13 apps (13.5% of the total number of apps identified) were selected for evaluation. App quality was assessed independently using MARS by two reviewers. Search queries yielded a total of 97 potentially relevant apps, of which 13 met our final inclusion criteria. Kendall's coefficient of concordance value for the inter-rater agreement was 0.93 (p =.03). COVID-19 GOV PK app had the highest average MARS score (4.7/5), and all of the apps had acceptable MARS scores (> 3.0). This study suggests that most COVID-related apps meet acceptable criteria for quality, content, or functionality, and they must highlight esthetic and interesting features for overall quality improvement to be welcomed by users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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