JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Breast cancer is a widespread disease rapidly increasing in the (MENA) region. Knowing that lack of awareness is a significant obstacle in diagnosing cancer in its early stages, we can see the importance of mobile apps in helping women discover more about it. And with the increasing availability of smartphone applications for various health purposes, breast cancer apps have emerged as a tool for raising awareness, providing support, and empowering women affected by this disease. These apps offer many features, including information on breast cancer risk factors, self-examination guides, appointment reminders, and community support groups or hotlines. Using apps raises the risk of privacy and security issues, so we hope that examining these features of the apps to contribute to the understanding of how technology can be utilized to improve these apps and provide insights for future development and improvement of breast cancer apps.

Objective:

The purpose of this study is to critically review Breast Cancer apps that are available to Arabic speakers based on their quality, privacy, and security.

Methods:

The search was conducted mid of December 2022 using the following Arabic keywords: سرطان الثدي – فحص سرطان الثدي – علاج سرطان الثدي – مرض سرطان الثدي – أعراض سرطان الثدي – فحص الثدي. The search was done using the Google Play Store and the App store in both, we used the web interface and the device build-in store. We excluded apps that didn’t have an Arabic interface or were developed for non-Arabic speaking. The Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) was used to evaluate the quality of the apps. And a risk score was done for the apps to calculate their security risk factor.

Results:

Results:

Only 9 apps were included with most supported ads and informational in nature. Overall, the apps had low overall download rates. The majority of the included apps requested dangerous access permissions including access to storage, media files, and the camera. Only few apps provided information about data security, and privacy.

Conclusions:

There is a shortage in the number of breast cancer apps that support Arabic speakers. The analyzed apps were found to be accessing unnecessary data and collecting information that was not relevant to the purpose of the app. Most apps were informative and need more interactive content to make the user reuse the app.