A Review of Mobile Applications’ Features for Pregnant Women's Self-care

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Mobile applications have been proposed as a helpful tool to provide health-related information to people, and this is more important in pregnancy-related mobile applications. This review study aimed to investigate the features of Persian and English mobile apps for self-care in pregnancy.This descriptive cross-sectional study was done on all Persian and English mobile applications related to pregnancy in 2022. A search was conducted on Iranian digital app market (Bazaar) and "Google Play", using the following keywords: "pregnancy", "pregnant women", "obstetrics", and their Persian translations. For each app, the extracted information included name, user satisfaction rate, and the features and provided information by mobile app.The total number of retrieved applications was 416 apps. After removing the duplicates and applying the inclusion criteria, 63 applications were selected for features extraction. Reviewing the features and information provided by the applications showed that the most frequent categories of information included the following items: childbirth and pregnancy (including timing contractions, fetal movement, symptoms of pregnancy and predicting delivery time), restrictions and limitations (including behavioral limits, sexual restrictions, smoking and alcohol, cosmetics and pregnancy and drug use during pregnancy), and monitoring and control tools (BMI Calculator, managing weight gain during pregnancy, control of blood pressure).Paying attention to pregnant women and meeting their information needs could lead to healthier generation. A wide range of mobile applications related to pregnancy are available with many capabilities. Considering pregnant women’s need for information and using these apps in self-care, it seems essential to develop and design a series of high-quality apps matching pregnant women's needs.