Validation of mHealth Applications for Behaviour Change : A Mixed-Method Study

Sammanfattning: Context: The amount of Mobile Health (mHealth) applications to cultivate a healthy lifestyle or rehabilitate patients with physical or mental disabilities are increasingly available on app stores[1]. However, without a validation process, satisfactory results may not be obtained, especially for behaviour change apps.  Objectives: Discover validation tools with high adaptability and design a validation process of mHealth apps for behaviour change involving theoretical frameworks.  Methods: The author conducted a literature review of previous behaviour change theories, validation tools, and research methods to design a validation process for behaviour change apps. A mixed research method of preliminary questionnaire followed by semi-structured interview for limited amount of participants was proposed to empathy with users and evaluate features in the app. Lastly, a case study of a smoking cessation app (Myli) was practiced to examine the feasibility of the designed validation process. Results: A four-step validation process was designed as an instruction to validate mHealth apps step by step, especially behaviour change apps. From the case study, we obtained the knowledge and opinions through the survey and interview such as smoking behaviours, expectations and requirements on user experience, recommendations on features,etc, with five elder smokers and five younger medical students.  Conclusions: This paper contributes a validation study of mHealth apps that applying behaviour change theories and validation tools. Furthermore, the proposed validation process allows app developers or medical professions to adapt their own requirements in validation to meet the app users’ needs.