Previously submitted to: Online Journal of Public Health Informatics (no longer under consideration since Oct 31, 2025)
Date Submitted: Apr 17, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 29, 2025 - Jun 24, 2025
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Assessment Tool for Mobile Public and Population Health Apps
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile health (mhealth) can be defined as the use of mobile devices to support personal health, health care, and public health. In particular, the term mhealth is used to refer to devices and software that accompany an individual and are used to inform or monitor health or to gather health data. Device examples include tablets and mobile phones. Software applications which enable information provision and gathering on mobile devices are often focused on personal health topics, such as calorie and step counters. There are fewer mobile applications for public and population health purposes. Quality and usability vary widely.
Objective:
We developed an assessment tool, the mobile Public Health Application Assessment Tool (mPHAAT), adapted from existing rating scales designed to assess apps focused on personal health and wellness, to evaluate the quality of public and population mhealth apps (hereafter “public health apps”).
Methods:
The mPHAAT was divided into classification and quality questions. Classification included developer, platform, intended purpose, intended audience, equity and security features, and operational aspects. Quality questions included user experience and credibility. Public and population health apps for a pilot evaluation of the assessment tool were identified by a focused search of US-based public health agency websites and app stores using search terms including “public health”, “population health”, mHealth, and “apps” or “applications”.
Results:
Ultimately, 11 apps were identified which met our strict criteria and the assessment tool was evaluated using those apps. The apps were generally well-designed although display was often not optimized for a mobile phone screen. It was sometimes difficult to tell from the download site/app store and from the app itself what the security features were. All of the apps assessed were free, but in this assessment, few were available in languages other than English. Written and visual content was appropriate for the target audience, but often lacked balance between being succinct and providing substance.
Conclusions:
Population- and public health-focused mhealth apps have the potential to address public health issues, including being used to gather point-of-use real-time data and educating and supporting public health, health care, and health first responders for population health purposes. Evaluation of the assessment tool highlighted the value in standardized assessment of public health mobile applications for both validation purposes and to create frameworks for public health app development. Inability to assess information security created an assessment vulnerability. This assessment tool is a useful starting place but should be validated across more users and apps.
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