Status and trends of mobile-health applications for iOS devices: A developer's perspective
Status and trends of mobile-health applications for iOS devices: A developer's perspective
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jss.2011.06.049
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发表时间：
2011-11-01
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Seng, Elizabeth K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Liu, Chang;Zhu, Qing;Seng, Elizabeth K.
现代智能移动设备提供富媒体和情景感知功能，这些功能对电子健康(e-Health)应用非常有用。因此，这些设备被接受为电子健康应用的目标设备，将它们转变为移动健康(移动健康)应用程序，也就不足为奇了。特别是，许多电子健康应用开发商选择了苹果的iOS移动设备，如iPad、iPhone或iPod Touch，以提供更方便、更丰富的用户体验，苹果应用商店中快速增长的移动健康应用就是明证。本文从开发者的角度分析了App Store中排名前200位的这类应用，重点概述了iOS移动健康应用的现状和趋势，并对相关技术、架构和用户界面设计问题进行了分析。排名前200位的应用程序根据它们的目的、功能和用户满意度被分成不同的组。研究表明，尽管最大的应用程序群是医疗信息参考应用程序，这些应用程序来自或与医学文章、网站或期刊相关，但移动用户对跟踪工具的青睐程度不成比例。显然，移动健康应用程序仍有很大的增长空间，以充分利用独特的移动平台功能，真正发挥其潜力。特别是，引入二维或三维可视化和情景感知可以进一步增强移动健康应用的可用性和实用性。本文旨在为有意使用iOS作为移动健康应用平台的开发人员和从业者提供参考和指导，特别是从技术角度。(C)2011 Elsevier Inc.保留所有权利。
Modern smart mobile devices offer media-rich and context-aware features that are highly useful for electronic-health (e-health) applications. It is therefore not surprising that these devices have gained acceptance as target devices for e-health applications, turning them into m-health (mobile-health) apps. In particular, many e-health application developers have chosen Apple's iOS mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch as the target device to provide more convenient and richer user experience, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of m-health apps in Apple's App Store. In this paper, the top two hundred of such apps from the App Store were examined from a developer's perspective to provide a focused overview of the status and trends of iOS m-health apps and an analysis of related technology, architecture, and user interface design issues. The top 200 apps were classified into different groups according to their purposes, functions, and user satisfaction. It was shown that although the biggest group of apps was medical information reference apps that were delivered from or related to medical articles, websites, or journals, mobile users disproportionally favored tracking tools. It was clear that m-health apps still had plenty of room to grow to take full advantage of unique mobile platform features and truly fulfill their potential. In particular, introduction of two- or three-dimensional visualization and context-awareness could further enhance m-health app's usability and utility. This paper aims to serve as a reference point and guide for developers and practitioners interested in using iOS as a platform for m-health applications, particular from the technical point of view. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.