The Need for Quality Assessment of mHealth Interventions

Abstract

With growing numbers of mHealth interventions, there is a need to evaluate the quality of existing apps based on quality assessment criteria that are grounded in published literature and health behavior research. These criteria can help identify the quality of mHealth apps from the perspectives of reliability, feature usefulness and feature convenience. This chapter will discuss the various quality criteria that are relevant for mHealth apps that target drug-related problems, as well as for medication management, through the development of two quality assessment tools. In addition to reliability, usability and privacy criteria, other feature criteria related to tele-monitoring, interaction checkers, dose calculators, medication information provision, medication records, as well as tele-support, tele-collaboration and personalization/contextualization, will be discussed. This chapter aims to provide guidance to mobile app developers, clinicians and patients on the types of quality parameters to consider in apps that are designed for pharmaceutical care and medication management.