The Extent and Coverage of Current Knowledge of Connected Health: Systematic Mapping Study

Background: This paper examines the development of the Connected Health research landscape with a view on providing a historical perspective on existing Connected Health research. Connected Health has become a rapidly growing research field as our healthcare system is facing pressured to become more proactive and patient centred. Objective: We aimed to identify the extent and coverage of the current body of knowledge in Connected Health. With this, we want to identify which topics have drawn the attention of Connected health researchers, and if there are gaps or interdisciplinary opportunities for further research. Methods: We used a systematic mapping study that combines scientific contributions from research on medicine, business, computer science and engineering. We analyse the papers with seven classification criteria, publication source, publication year, research types, empirical types, contribution types research topic and the condition studied in the paper. Results: Altogether, our search resulted in 208 papers which were analysed by a multidisciplinary group of researchers. Our results indicate a slow start for Connected Health research but a more recent steady upswing since 2013. The majority of papers proposed healthcare solutions (37%) or evaluated Connected Health approaches (23%). Case studies (28%) and experiments (26%) were the most popular forms of scientific validation employed. Diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and heart conditions are among the most prevalent conditions studied. Conclusions: We conclude that Connected Health research seems to be an established field of research, which has been growing strongly during the last five years. There seems to be more focus on technology driven research with a strong contribution from medicine, but business aspects of Connected health are not as much studied

Evaluating mobile health applications as digital therapeutical products

The emergence of new technological advancements and the unprecedented expansion of mobile phone usage has led to the exponential growth of Mobile Health Applications (mHealth apps) development and implementation in the global markets. mHealth apps have created innovative channels to diagnose, treat, monitor, and engage with patients in various healthcare settings, and therefore, it is an important exploration in the fields of information technology, healthcare, and cognitive behavioural sciences. However, a significant portion of mHealth apps has been identified to be developed without scientific or clinical evidence. The objective of implementing the proposed “mHealth App Evaluation Tool” and its validation of the perceived usefulness of the tool from clinicians, mHealth app developers and end-users is to provide a solution for addressing the current gap in evaluating the efficacy of unregulated mHealth apps. An extensive review of the literature from 2010 to 2022 was conducted in three separate phases, gathering and synthesising the core concepts of the mHealth app landscape, proposed frameworks and parameters, the evolution and construction of unidimensional and multidimensional scales and the use of multi-stakeholder participation for a holistic evaluation process. The proposed mHealth app evaluation tool was developed on the foundation of six design drivers: modifiability, scalability, multi-stakeholder involvement, simultaneous management of multiple evaluation projects, ease of use and accessibility. The development of the tool utilised the RestFul API pattern, leveraging Laravel PHP and Vue.js frameworks. The data collection process was completed in two separate phases. The first phase involved the data obtained from the participant’s evaluation of the WYSA app using the proposed mHealth App Evaluation Tool. The system auto-generated an associated average score out of 5 against each evaluation. The second phase involved the data collection during the 30 minutes interview session. Due to the ever-changing nature of software applications, it is inevitable that the elements of mHealth app evaluation will continue to evolve and change over time. What is deemed to be necessary and critical in evaluating mHealth apps today may not be so in years to come. The mHealth App Evaluation tool addresses the need for future criteria modifications, scalability, and the necessity to obtain expert knowledge from multiple stakeholders for a holistic mHealth app evaluation