Research Article

Chinese Mobile Health APPs for Hypertension Management: A Systematic Evaluation of Usefulness

Table 4

The smallest usefulness evaluation item template of APPs.

CatalogueChina hypertension prevention and treatment mHealth service factor catalogueNumberEvaluation itemsID

APP service evaluationCalendar-based reminder1Does it have the function of calendar-based hospital or community treatment and management of chronic disease?C1
2Does it have the function of calendar-based to-do list (e.g., drug use on that day or reminder, blood pressure measurement at preset time and reminder, and exercise event and reminder)?C2
3Does it have the function of calendar-based remark? (Record some subjective symptom or remark information.)C3
Appointed registration4Does it have the function of extra bills for direct contact with doctors or online hospital registration?A3
Automatic and/or manual data processing5Does it have the function for the patient to manually input the necessary data above?P1
6Does it support the acquisition of blood pressure and heart rate by using externally placed or inner sensors (e.g., acquisition of blood pressure and heart rate by using iHealth band or Xiaomi band; check list results; and medical records, pictures, or symptoms were photographed by cam)?P2
Communication and social networks7Does it integrate common Chinese social software such as WeChat, Weibo, or QQ?S2
8Does it have the function to share information and communicate with other users (e.g., providing a module for patient community discussion, for discussing experiences, or free propaganda and education activities in community medical institutions)?S3
Popularization, propaganda, and education9Does it push or carry propaganda and recommendations on health habits?A1
10Does it push or carry propaganda and recommendations on nutrition meals?A2
Localization service11Does it have the localization function that helps to localize patients or informed the patients about the position of the nearest doctor?S1
Others (emergency contact)12Does it have the function for setting emergency contact persons? Does it allow saving telephone and/or WeChat of contact persons?E1
13Does it have the function of emergency contact, allowing to directly call the emergency contact persons via telephone and/or WeChat?E2
14Does it have the function of urgency display page (Automatically displaying the abstract of patient’s blood pressure and illness situation and emergency contact persons)? Does it allow visiting the doctor upon emergency treatment at convenience?E3
Others (time axis-based data display)15Does it have two basic timestamps of the patient’s medical data (data generation timestamp and data record timestamp)?T1
16Does it have the function of abstraction (automatic frequency reduction for the collected high-frequency data) and visualization (graph-like description of the patient’s data) of data from spatial-temporal perspectives?T2
Others (data security and privacy protection)17Does the software allow offline input, acquisition, and use of data (cached locally and automatic synchronization upon loading)?F1
18Does it have the function of single- or multiple-user authentication and authorization?U1
19Does it have the function of urgent information acquisition?U2
20Does it have the function of local storage and caching of data encryption?U3
21Does it have the function of data signature antitampering?U4
22Does it have the function of data backup?U5
Data element evaluationHypertension prevention and control information records23History of present illnessD1
24Previous historyD2
25History of surgeryD3
26Social history (including smoking, alcohols, privacy, and occupation)D4
27Family historyD5
28History of allergyD6
29Recording of immunity and inoculationD7
30Follow-up records (including one-to-one paired community doctor)D8
31Laboratory examination resultsD9
32Vital signs (height, weight, BMI, and blood pressure)D11
33Demographic information of users (name, gender)D12
Drug use information records34Records of drug use situationsD10