JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mobile phone use, and subsequently, mobile health (mHealth) interventions, have seen an exponential increase in the last decade. There are in excess of 318,000 health-related applications available freely for consumer download. However, many of these interventions are not evaluated and are lacking appropriate regulation. Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) are often considered the “gold standard” study design in determining effectiveness of interventions, but recent literature has identified limitations in the methodology when used to evaluate mHealth.

Objective:

The objective of this research is to investigate system developer experiences of evaluating mHealth interventions in a developing country context.

Methods:

We employed a qualitative exploratory approach, conducting semi-structured interviews with multi-disciplinary members of an mHealth project consortium. A conventional content analysis approach was used, to allow codes and themes to be identified directly from the data.

Results:

The findings from this study identify the system developer perceptions of mHealth evaluation, providing an insight into the requirements of an effective mHealth evaluation. This study has identified social and technical factors which should be taken into account when evaluating an mHealth intervention.

Conclusions:

Contextual issues represented one of the most recurrent challenges of mHealth evaluation in a developing country context, highlighting the importance of mixed-method evaluation. There are a myriad of social, technical, and regulatory variables which may impact the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention. Failure to account for these variables in an evaluation may limit the ability of the intervention to achieve long-term implementation and scale.