Usability and accessibility in mHealth stroke apps: An empirical assessment

Q1 Medicine

Informatics in Medicine Unlocked Pub Date : 2025-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.imu.2025.101616

Pontus Svensson , Shuanglan Lin , Leonardo Horn Iwaya

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background

Cerebrovascular accidents or strokes continue to be among the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. This has stressed the need to design digital health solutions that can be effectively used by patients, caregivers, and medical professionals, helping to alleviate the global disease burden. In this context, mobile health (mHealth) apps are shown to be valuable solutions for bridging healthcare gaps.

Objective

In this study, we aim to evaluate the quality aspects of usability and accessibility of stroke-related mHealth apps for Android. We seek to identify prevalent issues and discuss recommendations to enhance user experience and app quality.

Methods

We selected 16 mHealth stroke apps, accounting for more than 219k downloads. The apps were assessed through different methods, including accessibility testing with the Google Accessibility Scanner, overall quality assessment with the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS), and usability testing using heuristic evaluations.

Results

Our findings show significant issues with the apps’ touch target sizes and text contrast, which are particularly important for stroke app users with impaired vision and motor skills. MARS evaluations revealed that some apps, such as the Constant Therapy app, excelled in engagement and functionality. In contrast, many apps scored lower due to limited functionality and unclear/confusing interfaces, such as Stroke Recovery Predictor and Conversation Therapy Lite. Heuristic evaluations also highlighted several usability violations, such as a lack of “Visibility of System Status” and “Insufficient Error Messaging.”

Conclusion

Overall, most apps presented deficiencies in several aspects of usability and accessibility. As recommendations, developers can increase touch target sizes, improve text contrast, increase functional variety, optimise navigation, and enhance user engagement strategies. Addressing such issues can help improve the stroke apps’ usability and accessibility, aiming for better health outcomes for stroke patients.

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移动医疗中风应用程序的可用性和可访问性：一项实证评估

背景脑血管意外或中风仍然是全世界死亡和残疾的主要原因之一。这就强调需要设计数字卫生解决方案，使患者、护理人员和医疗专业人员能够有效使用，从而帮助减轻全球疾病负担。在这种情况下，移动医疗（mHealth）应用程序被证明是弥合医疗差距的宝贵解决方案。目的在本研究中，我们旨在评估Android上卒中相关移动健康应用程序的可用性和可访问性的质量方面。我们试图找出普遍存在的问题，并讨论建议，以提高用户体验和应用质量。我们选择了16个移动健康中风应用程序，下载量超过21.9万次。这些应用程序通过不同的方法进行评估，包括使用谷歌无障碍扫描仪进行无障碍测试，使用移动应用评级量表（MARS）进行整体质量评估，以及使用启发式评估进行可用性测试。我们的研究结果表明，应用程序的触摸目标大小和文本对比度存在重大问题，这对于视力和运动技能受损的中风应用程序用户尤为重要。MARS的评估显示，一些应用程序，如Constant Therapy应用程序，在用户粘性和功能方面表现出色。相比之下，许多应用程序由于功能有限和界面不清晰/令人困惑而得分较低，例如中风恢复预测器和会话治疗生活。启发式评估还强调了一些可用性违规，例如缺乏“系统状态可见性”和“错误消息传递不足”。总体而言，大多数应用在可用性和可访问性方面存在不足。作为建议，开发者可以增加触控目标尺寸，改善文本对比度，增加功能多样性，优化导航，增强用户粘性策略。解决这些问题有助于提高中风应用程序的可用性和可访问性，旨在为中风患者带来更好的健康结果。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Informatics in Medicine Unlocked Medicine-Health Informatics

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

0.00%

发文量

282

审稿时长

39 days

期刊介绍： Informatics in Medicine Unlocked (IMU) is an international gold open access journal covering a broad spectrum of topics within medical informatics, including (but not limited to) papers focusing on imaging, pathology, teledermatology, public health, ophthalmological, nursing and translational medicine informatics. The full papers that are published in the journal are accessible to all who visit the website.