Project Overview

There are over 300,000 mobile apps for health. These apps can enhance self-management and access to health services, provide health information, and facilitate communication between patients and healthcare providers. However, not all mobile health apps have acceptable quality or are useful. As the sale of apps is not regulated, there are minimal safeguards to protect users from apps with low quality or harmful content. To evaluate the quality of health apps, users are limited to available reviews and ratings that may not be trustworthy. We developed the Alberta Rating Index for Apps (ARIA) that offers a way for users, including older adults, family caregivers, and health service providers, to evaluate the quality and usability of health apps based on nine quality criteria. In this proposed project, we will develop and examine the acceptance and reliability of a web-based version of ARIA in English and French. Web-based ARIA calculates a rating score for each app and allows users to visualize areas of strength and weakness based on users’ ratings. We will use the ratings to create a crowd sourced repository of mobile health apps and share the summary of ratings with website visitors.