Evaluation of asemiautomated App Store analysis for the identification of health apps for cardiac arrhythmias.

Abstract

Smartphone apps are increasingly utilised by patients and physicians for medical purposes. Thus, numerous applications are provided on the App Store platforms. The aim of the study was to establish anovel, expanded approach of asemiautomated retrospective App Store analysis (SARASA) to identify and characterise health apps in the context of cardiac arrhythmias. An automated total read-out of the "Medical" category of Apple's German App Store was performed in December 2022 by analysing the developer-provided descriptions and other metadata using asemiautomated multilevel approach. Search terms were defined, based on which the textual information of the total extraction results was automatically filtered. Atotal of 435 of 31,564 apps were identified in the context of cardiac arrhythmias. Of those, 81.4% were found to deal with education, decision support, or disease management, and 26.2% (additionally) provided the opportunity to derive information on heart rhythm. The apps were intended for healthcare professionals in 55.9%, students in 17.5%, and/or patients in 15.9%. In 31.5%, the target population was not specified in the description texts. In all, 108 apps (24.8%) provided atelemedicine treatment approach; 83.7% of the description texts did not reveal any information on medical product status; 8.3% of the apps indicated that they have and 8.0% that they do not have medical product status. Through the supplemented SARASA method, health apps in the context of cardiac arrhythmias could be identified and assigned to the target categories. Clinicians and patients have awide choice of apps, although the app description texts do not provide sufficient information about the intended use and quality.