IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v20y2023i2p1012-d1026701.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pregnancy Apps for Self-Monitoring: Scoping Review of the Most Popular Global Apps Available in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Natasa Lazarevic

    (Biomedical Informatics and Digital Health, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
    Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia)

  • Marie Lecoq

    (Biomedical Informatics and Digital Health, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
    Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
    AgroParisTech, Universite Paris-Saclay, CEDEX, 91 123 Palaiseau, France)

  • Céline Bœhm

    (School of Physics, Faculty of Science, Physics Building, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia)

  • Corinne Caillaud

    (Biomedical Informatics and Digital Health, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
    Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia)

Abstract

Digital health tools, such as apps, have the potential to promote healthy behaviours, especially self-monitoring, which can facilitate pregnancy management and reduce the risk of associated pregnancy health conditions. While pregnancy apps are popular amongst pregnant women, there is limited information about the overall quality of their content or self-monitoring tools and the number of behaviour change techniques (BCTs) that they include. The aim of this study was thus to assess the quality of pregnancy apps for self-monitoring, and their usage of BCTs. We identified pregnancy apps by web scraping the most popular global apps for self-monitoring in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store available in Australia. The app quality was evaluated using the scorecard approach and the inclusion of BCTs was evaluated using the ABACUS tool. We identified 31 pregnancy apps that met our eligibility criteria. We found that pregnancy apps tended to score the highest in the domains of ‘cost and time’, ‘usability’, and ‘technical’, and lowest on ‘clinical’ and ‘end-user requirements’. Additionally, the majority of apps contained minimal BCTs. Based on our findings, we propose a digital health scorecard visualisation that would break down app quality criteria and present them in a more accessible way to clinicians and pregnant users. We conclude that these findings highlight the shortcomings of available commercial pregnancy apps and the utility of a digital health scorecard visualisation that would empower users to make more informed decisions about which apps are the most appropriate for their needs.

Suggested Citation

  • Natasa Lazarevic & Marie Lecoq & Céline Bœhm & Corinne Caillaud, 2023. "Pregnancy Apps for Self-Monitoring: Scoping Review of the Most Popular Global Apps Available in Australia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-17, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:2:p:1012-:d:1026701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1012/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/2/1012/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deborah Lupton, 2017. "‘It Just Gives Me a Bit of Peace of Mind’: Australian Women’s Use of Digital Media for Pregnancy and Early Motherhood," Societies, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-13, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. María Caballero-Galilea & Esther Martínez-Miguel & Juan Carlos Fernández Gonzalo & Ricardo Saiz de la Cuesta Abbad & Margarita Rubio Alonso, 2022. "Digitized Prenatal Newsletter: Impact on Obstetric Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Mackintosh, Nicola & Gong, Qian (Sarah) & Hadjiconstantinou, Michelle & Verdezoto, Nervo, 2021. "Digital mediation of candidacy in maternity care: Managing boundaries between physiology and pathology," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:2:p:1012-:d:1026701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.