This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:
Mobile Health (mhealth)?
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Mobile Health Applications for the Most Prevalent Conditions by the World Health Organization: Review and Analysis
Borja Mart?nez-P?rez*, MSc; Isabel de la Torre-D?ez*, PhD; Miguel L?pez-Coronado*, PhD
University of Valladolid, Department of Signal Theory and Communications, and Telematics Engineering., University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
*all authors contributed equally
Corresponding Author:Borja Mart?nez-P?rez, MSc
University of Valladolid
Department of Signal Theory and Communications, and Telematics Engineering
University of Valladolid
Paseo de Bel?n, 15
Valladolid, 47011
Spain
Phone: 34 983423000 ext 3703
Fax: 34 983423667
Email:
ABSTRACT
Background: New possibilities for mHealth have arisen by means of the latest advances in mobile communications and technologies. With more than 1 billion smartphones and 100 million tablets around the world, these devices can be a valuable tool in health care management. Every aid for health care is welcome and necessary as shown by the more than 50 million estimated deaths caused by illnesses or health conditions in 2008. Some of these conditions have additional importance depending on their prevalence.
Objective: To study the existing applications for mobile devices exclusively dedicated to the eight most prevalent health conditions by the latest update (2004) of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) of the World Health Organization (WHO): iron-deficiency anemia, hearing loss, migraine, low vision, asthma, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis (OA), and unipolar depressive disorders.
Methods: Two reviews have been carried out. The first one is a review of mobile applications in published articles retrieved from the following systems: IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Knowledge, and PubMed. The second review is carried out by searching the most important commercial app stores: Google play, iTunes, BlackBerry World, Windows Phone Apps+Games, and Nokia's Ovi store. Finally, two applications for each condition, one for each review, were selected for an in-depth analysis.
Results: Search queries up to April 2013 located 247 papers and more than 3673 apps related to the most prevalent conditions. The conditions in descending order by the number of applications found in literature are diabetes, asthma, depression, hearing loss, low vision, OA, anemia, and migraine. However when ordered by the number of commercial apps found, the list is diabetes, depression, migraine, asthma, low vision, hearing loss, OA, and anemia. Excluding OA from the former list, the four most prevalent conditions have fewer apps and research than the final four. Several results are extracted from the in-depth analysis: most of the apps are designed for monitoring, assisting, or informing about the condition. Typically an Internet connection is not required, and most of the apps are aimed for the general public and for nonclinical use. The preferred type of data visualization is text followed by charts and pictures. Assistive and monitoring apps are shown to be frequently used, whereas informative and educational apps are only occasionally used.
Conclusions: Distribution of work on mobile applications is not equal for the eight most prevalent conditions. Whereas some conditions such as diabetes and depression have an overwhelming number of apps and research, there is a lack of apps related to other conditions, such as anemia, hearing loss, or low vision, which must be filled.
(J Med Internet Res 2013;15(6):e120)
doi:10.2196/jmir.2600
KEYWORDS
apps; mHealth; mobile applications; prevalent conditions; World Health Organization (WHO)
Since the creation of the Internet, its massive use, especially in developed countries, has generated new forms of technology in almost every aspect of life [1]. One of these aspects is health care; Internet technologies have initiated major advances in telemedicine and telehealth, now present in every modern health care organization [2]. In the field of telehealth, eHealth has arisen as a paradigm involving the concepts of health, technology, and commerce, with commerce and technology as tools in the service of health [3]. Chang Liu et al (2011) perceive eHealth applications as the software applications that provide tools, processes, and communications in order to support electronic health care practice [4]. In addition to this, with the advent of wireless communications, there are no longer barriers of space and time between health care providers and patients [5]. The use of new wireless communications technology, such as mobile telecommunications networks (2.5G, 3G, 4G, HSPA+), Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) including Bluetooth and ZigBee, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Radio-frequency Identification (RFID), and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), has greatly boosted telemedicine and eHealth [5-12].
In this context and thanks to these advances in communications, a new term arises: mHealth, a component of eHealth. The Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe) of the World Health Organization (WHO) defines mHealth or mobile health as ?medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices? [13]. While new wireless technologies were being developed, new mobile devices were being created. In this way, PDAs, tablets, and smartphones appeared on the market. Although PDAs experienced a boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, they have been replaced by smartphones and tablets with new functions and utilities, which are common now in developed countries [4]. There are already more than 1.08 billion smartphones of a total of 5 billion mobile phones around the world, with 80% of the population having a mobile phone [14]. Regarding tablets, International Data Corporation (IDC) conducted research on their shipments showing 70.9 million shipments of tablets worldwide in 2011 and an estimated 117.1 million and 165.9 million in 2012 and 2013 respectively [15]. Thus, there is great opportunity for mHealth in using these mobile devices and, in fact, a significant number of mHealth applications have been already developed for these platforms.
Telecommunications technology aside, it is clear that there is still a long way to go in defeating illness. In 2008, WHO estimated a total of 56.8 million deaths and only 5.1 million of them were caused by injuries. The rest were caused by communicable disease, maternal and perinatal conditions and nutritional deficiencies (15.6 million deaths), and noncommunicable conditions (36.1 million deaths) [16]. Nevertheless, attention should be focused not only on the diseases that cause death, but also the diseases or conditions that can cause a disability or loss of health. In 2004, 2.9% of the world?s population were severely disabled, and 12.4% were moderately long-term disabled. In this context, it is essential to know the prevalence of an illness or condition, ie, the number of people who have the condition at any moment [17].
According to WHO?s latest update (2004) of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) [17], the most prevalent conditions are iron-deficiency anemia (IDA), hearing loss, migraine, low vision, asthma, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis (OA), and unipolar depressive disorder. The prevalence of each condition is shown in Figure 1. IDA represents 50% of the total cases of anemia (even though both terms are usually used interchangeably, they are not the same). The biggest percentage of affected can be found in underdeveloped and developing zones, in Africa, South East Asia, and Western Pacific, most of them women of reproductive age and children [18-20]. There are two types of hearing loss: moderate or greater hearing loss, which affect 275.7 million individuals, and mild hearing loss, with 360.8 million individuals [21-24]. Migraines are the most prevalent chronic neurological disorder in adults [25], with 11% of affected in Western countries [26-30].
The Global Data on visual impairment 2010 [31] indicates 246 million people with low vision and 39 million blind, equaling a total of 285 million people with any type of visual impairment [32-34]. Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood, and most asthma-related deaths take place in poor and developing countries [35-38]. It is estimated that 347 million people have diabetes mellitus [39], commonly named diabetes, but different from diabetes insipidus [40-55]. OA is the most prevalent musculoskeletal disease, and it is thought that 9.6% of men and 18% of women over 60 years have this condition [56-59]. Finally, there are more than 350 million individuals with any unipolar or bipolar depressive disorder [60-63].
To date, there are many published articles about types of wireless connections for mobile devices [8,9,64,65], articles about evaluations of apps for specific objectives [66-68], and reviews of apps of a determined device, software, or field [4,69,70], but there are not articles about the deadliest or the most prevalent conditions and diseases. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to study the existing applications for mobile devices exclusively dedicated to the eight most prevalent conditions [17] and to analyze a sample of the apps for each condition. The goal was to find the number of apps related to each condition, their common features, comparing the commercial ones with those used in research, and finding possible gaps in the development of these types of applications and whatever else might arise. For these purposes, a review has been done: (1) research of published articles containing specific target strings, obtained by search queries in a number of databases, and (2) research of applications related to these conditions in mobile phone application stores.
Source: http://www.jmir.org/2013/6/e120/
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