ReviewJAMIA open2025
A scoping review of the reporting quality of reviews of commercially and publicly available mobile health apps.
Review in JAMIA open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: There is no guidance to support the reporting of systematic reviews of mobile health (mhealth) apps (app reviews), so authors attempt to use/modify the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). There is a need for reporting guidance, building on PRISMA where appropriate, tailored to app reviews. The objectives were to describe the reporting quality of published mHealth app reviews, identify the need for, and develop potential candidate items for a reporting guideline. Materials and Methods: A scoping review following the Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksey and O'Malley approaches. App reviews were identified in January 2024 from SCOPUS, CINAHL, AMED, EMBASE, Medline, PsycINFO, ACM Digital Library, snowballing reference lists, and forward citation searches. Data were extracted into Excel and analyzed using descriptive statistics and content synthesis, using PRISMA items as a framework. Results: One hundred and seventy-one app reviews were identified, published from 2013 to 2024. Protocols were developed for 11% of the reviews, and only 52% reported the geographical location of the app markets. Few reported the duplicate removal process (12%), device and operating system used (30%), or made clear recommendations for the best-rated apps (18%). Nineteen PRISMA items were not reported by most (>85%) reviews, and 4 were modified by >30% of the reviews. Involvement of patient/public contributors (4%) or other stakeholders (11%) was infrequent. Overall, 34 candidate items and 10 subitems were identified to be considered for a new guideline. Discussion and Conclusion: App reviews were inconsistently reported, and many PRISMA items were not deemed relevant. Consensus work is needed to revise and prioritize the candidate items for a reporting guideline for systematic app reviews.
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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.