Currently submitted to: JMIR Preprints
Date Submitted: Feb 28, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 28, 2025 - Feb 13, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Mobile App Rating Scale (User Version) for the Assessment Community Health Worker Mobile Medical Application: a Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) pose a significant burden in the Philippines, with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases among the leading causes of mortality. The Department of Health implemented the Philippine Package of Essential Non-Communicable Disease Interventions (Phil PEN) to address this issue. However, healthcare professionals faced challenges in implementing the program due to the cumbersome nature of the multiple forms required for patient risk assessment. To address this, a mobile medical app, the PhilPEN Risk Stratification app, was developed for community health workers (CHWs) using the extreme prototyping framework.
Objective:
This study aimed to assess the usability of the PhilPEN Risk Stratification app using the (User Version) Mobile App Rating Scale (uMARS) and to determine the utility of uMARS in app development. The secondary objective was to achieve an acceptable (>3 rating) score for the app in uMARS, highlighting the significance of quality monitoring through validated metrics in improving the adoption and continuous iterative development of medical mobile apps.
Methods:
The study employed a qualitative research methodology, including key informant interviews, linguistic validation, and cognitive debriefing. The extreme prototyping framework was used for app development, involving iterative refinement through progressively functional prototypes. CHWs from a designated health center participated in the app development and evaluation process – providing feedback, using the app to collect data from patients, and rating it through uMARS.
Results:
The uMARS scores for the PhilPEN Risk Stratification app were above average, with an Objective Quality rating of 4.05 and a Personal Opinion/Subjective Quality rating of 3.25. The mobile app also garnered a 3.88-star rating. Under Objective Quality, the app scored well in Functionality (4.19), Aesthetics (4.08), and Information (4.41), indicating its accuracy, ease of use, and provision of high-quality information. The Engagement score (3.53) was lower due to the app's primary focus on healthcare rather than entertainment.
Conclusions:
The study demonstrated the effectiveness of the extreme prototyping framework in developing a medical mobile app and the utility of uMARS not only as a metric, but also as a guide for authoring high-quality mobile health apps. The uMARS metrics were beneficial in setting developer expectations, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and guiding the iterative improvement of the app. Further assessment with more CHWs and patients is recommended. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.