Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jan 27, 2021
Date Accepted: Oct 28, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 3, 2021
Selecting and Evaluating Mobile Health Apps for the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI): A Practical and Pragmatic Approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
The ubiquity of smartphones and mobile devices in the general population presents an unprecedented opportunity for preventative health. Not surprisingly, the use of electronic health resources (i.e., eHealth resources) accessed through mobile devices in clinical trials is becoming more prevalent; the selection, screening, and collation of quality eHealth resources is necessary to clinical trials using these technologies. However, the constant creation and turnover of new eHealth resources can make this task difficult. There may be value in adopting practical and pragmatic approaches to helping researchers and clinicians identify and disseminate e-resources.
Objective:
The study aimed to create a set of guidelines (i.e., a checklist) to aid the members of the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) Canada trial – a preconception randomized controlled clinical trial to prevent child obesity – to assist their efforts in searching, identifying, screening, and including selected eHealth resources for participant use in the study intervention.
Methods:
A framework for screening eHealth resources was adapted from the PRISMA checklist for systematic and scoping reviews to optimize the rigor, clarity, and transparency of the process. Details regarding searching, selecting, extracting and assessing quality of eHealth resources are described.
Results:
This study resulted in the systematic development of a checklist consisting of 12 guiding principles, organized in a chronological versus a priority sequence to aid researchers in searching, screening, and the quality of various eHealth resources.
Conclusions:
This checklist may be useful to other researchers and practitioners developing similar interventions.
Citation
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Copyright
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