Methodological foundations of mHealth design studies: A content analysis of literature

Abstract

Despite the pervasiveness of mobile devices and the number of available mobile health (mHealth) apps, a scaled nationwide mHealth solution for supporting continuous healthcare is lacking in many developing countries. Systematic reviews in mobile health field show various barriers to explain the lack of scalability and sustainability among mHealth interventions. However, little is known about the methodological soundness of mHealth app design studies. We conducted a literature review to investigate the theoretical foundations of mHealth design studies, which are essential to inform design and content of the solution. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and classify the mHealth studies in terms of their methodological soundness for the design, development process of smartphone application (app) through content analysis.