FHH Quick App Review: How Can a Quality Review Process Assist Primary Care Providers in Choosing a Family Health History App for Patient Care?

Abstract

Family health history (FHH) is a data type serving risk assessment, diagnosis, research, and preventive health. Despite technological leaps in genomic variant detection, FHH remains the most accessible, least expensive, and most practical assessment tool for assessing risks attributable to genetic inheritance. The purpose of this manuscript is to outline a process to assist primary care professionals in choosing FHH digital tools for patient care based on the new ISO/TS 82304-2 Technical Specification (TS), which is a recently developed method to determine eHealth app quality. With a focus on eHealth in primary care, we applied the quality label concept to FHH, and how a primary care physician can quickly review the quality and reliability of an FHH app. Based on our review of the ISO TS’s 81 questions, we compiled a list of 25 questions that are recommended to be more succinct as an initial review. We call this process the FHH Quick App Review. Our ‘informative-only’ 25 questions do not produce a quality score, but a guide to complete an initial review of FHH apps. Most of the questions are straight from the ISO TS, some are modified or de novo. We believe the 25 questions are not only relevant to FHH app reviews but could also serve to aid app development and clinical implementation.