Facilitating the development of cross-platform mHealth applications for chronic supportive care and a case study

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Highlights

  • We propose a mobile health system architecture for chronic patient supportive care.

  • We designed and developed interactive native Android and Web prototype applications.

  • Performance and Usability studies were conducted to test efficacy and usability.

  • Users highly rated the applications in terms of ease-of-use, intuitiveness, and clarity.

  • The system offers scalable and transferrable mobile health solution.

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) apps have received increasing attention, due to their abilities to support patients who suffer from various conditions. mHealth apps may be especially helpful for patients with chronic diseases, by providing pertinent information, tracking symptoms, and inspiring adherence to medication regimens. To achieve these objectives, researchers need to prototype mHealth apps with dedicated software architectures. In this paper, a cloud-based mHealth application development concept is presented for chronic patient supportive care apps. The concept integrates existing software platforms and services for simplified app development that can be reused for other target applications. This developmental method also facilitates app portability, through the use of common components found across multiple mobile platforms, and scalability, through the loose coupling of services. The results are demonstrated by the development of native Android and cross-platform web apps, in a case study that presents an mHealth solution for endocrine hormone therapy (EHT). A performance analysis methodology, an app usability evaluation, based on focus group responses, and alpha and pre-beta testing results are provided.

Abbreviations

mHealth
mobile health
App
application
CP
cross-platform
PEF
Patient Engagement Framework
AWS
Amazon web services
EC2
elastic cloud compute
REDCap
research electronic data capture
FCM
Firebase cloud messaging
APK
android package
CPU
central processing unit

Keywords

Smartphones
Mobile devices
Mobile computing
Cross-platform
Mobile health
Applications

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