A rating system can help lead clinicians to a smartphone application that can benefit certain patients by winnowing the exhaustive list of available apps down to a few for clinicians to consider, according to a study published in JMIR.
Researchers acknowledge that, in general, user ratings promote a biased and unreliable description of an application. This type of review is also not helpful to clinicians, as they must know whether the mHealth service can fit their needs.
Therefore, researchers created an application rating system that integrated evidence, user experience, and content value into a single system.
The study consisted of an initial review of 248 applications and 6,944 data points. Researchers used this data to create an App Rating Inventory System, which consisted of three categories and 28 items.