ArticleDigital health
The good, the bad, and the poorly designed: The mobile app stores are not a user-friendly experience for health and medical purposes.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Mobile Apps for Common Noncommunicable Disease Management: Systematic Search in App Stores and Evaluation Using the Mobile App Rating Scale.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2024Pooled it
- Value in app store metadata and user reviews: A dual perspective on quality of Parkinson's and dementia apps.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- Beyond the interface: benchmarking pediatric mobile health applications for monitoring child growth using the Mobile App Rating Scale.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Participant evaluation of MOMitor™-a smartphone-based application that monitors postpartum mental and physical health status.mHealth · 2025Article
- Article
- A shot in the dark: the impact of online visibility on the search for an effective sleep app.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2024Review
- Assessment of healthcare application quality: Development of a standardized methods for healthcare professionals.MethodsX · 2023Article
- The Internet, Apps, and the Anesthesiologist.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The utilization of mobile health applications to help manage health conditions have grown in utilization within the past decade. However, the application stores (i.e. Google and Apple) are not designed in a user-friendly manner that allows consumers to identify high-quality health and medical-related mobile applications. Researchers have been interested in identifying applications that may be recommended for patient care but have found the ability to quantify and assess these applications to be difficult due to the current layout and organization of applications. We explain here in this brief communication our own research experience in the identification of mobile health applications on the application stores, along with trends noted in other mobile health research, and make suggestions on how the application store experience could be improved for both patients and health professionals. These include collaboration between developers, medical professionals and organizations, and technology companies to facilitate a better means of categorizing health applications for patient use, alongside other current endeavors being pursued such as application review organizations and the creation of digital health formulary databases.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.