Sustainability Evaluation of mHealth Apps and Wearables: Protocol for a Systematic Review.

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) technology is widely used in health care systems globally to improve patients' quality of life and reduce the burden on caregivers. Mobile apps allow users to manage different health-related situations from their homes, such as self-monitoring their symptoms, keeping track of progress, and maintaining a profile for a particular condition. However, the benefits of mHealth apps are compromised due to a lack of sustainability evaluation. Currently, there is a lack of all-inclusive research that presents sustainability evaluation from economic, social, and environmental perspectives of mHealth and wearables. Thus, it is important to evaluate the sustainability of newly proposed or already in-use mHealth solutions.

Objective: The objective of this systematic literature review is to deeply understand and analyze different dimensions of sustainability in the health care domain and identify existing evaluation criteria and frameworks for mHealth solutions.

Methods: This protocol was developed following the PRISMA-P (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols) guidelines. A planned and systematic approach will be used to identify, evaluate, and synthesize relevant studies reported in English. We have conducted a systematic search focusing on search terms related to sustainable health care, mHealth solutions, and evaluation or assessment criteria in digital databases of Scopus, Web of Science, ACM, PubMed, PubMed Central, and CINAHL.

Results: As of September 19, 2024, preliminary searches have been conducted, identifying 1368 relevant papers that meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria and are eligible for further screening.

Conclusions: This protocol will guide the review of existing literature on essential aspects of the sustainability of mHealth solutions and evaluation frameworks. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed systematic review will be the first review to extensively study essential concepts related to defining sustainable mHealth solutions, identifying key dimensions founding the basis for evaluation frameworks, and discussing the existing sustainability evaluation frameworks for mHealth solutions.

Trial registration: PROSPERO CRD42024599333; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42024599333.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/68649.