A Cross-sectional Study on Mobile Medical Applications and the Effectiveness of the Strategies Adopted to Promote Them

摘要

Introduction: Increase in the number of mobile medical applications (Apps) along with an increased sophistication of mobile technology resulted in an altered way of patient awareness and care. It is always challenging for an App developer to ensure the success of an App, hence the present study aims to identify and study the utilization promotional strategies for mobile medical Apps. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 150 mobile medical Apps. These were then comparatively evaluated for App information, technical parameters, and privacy permissions. The utilization of promotional strategies, user ratings, and number of downloads were presented descriptively. Results: App store listing and App store optimization, social sharing from inside networks, and keep App freemium were the top three strategies used for the promotion of the mobile medical Apps. Country-wise App ratings indicate that the UK Apps have considerably higher median value for high ratings followed by Australia and the USA. Higher percentage of downloads were seen among the mobile medical Apps developed by Australia, the USA, and the UK developers. Conclusion: Previous studies purely focused on the adherence of medical Apps, benefits of smartphones, and benefits of medical Apps, the effectiveness of promotional strategies on the acceptability of medical App is not available but the need of promoting the Apps was not available in this area. Present study was able to clearly indicate the promotional strategy utilization and was also demonstrated disparities in user rating and number of downloads across countries.