A scoping review of the reporting quality of reviews of commercially and publicly available mobile health apps

Objectives

There is no guidance to support the reporting of systematic reviews of mobile health (mhealth) apps (app reviews), so authors attempt to use/modify the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). There is a need for reporting guidance, building on PRISMA where appropriate, tailored to app reviews. The objectives were to describe the reporting quality of published mHealth app reviews, identify the need for, and develop potential candidate items for a reporting guideline.

Materials and Methods

A scoping review following the Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksey and O’Malley approaches. App reviews were identified in January 2024 from SCOPUS, CINAHL, AMED, EMBASE, Medline, PsycINFO, ACM Digital Library, snowballing reference lists, and forward citation searches. Data were extracted into Excel and analyzed using descriptive statistics and content synthesis, using PRISMA items as a framework.

Results

One hundred and seventy-one app reviews were identified, published from 2013 to 2024. Protocols were developed for 11% of the reviews, and only 52% reported the geographical location of the app markets. Few reported the duplicate removal process (12%), device and operating system used (30%), or made clear recommendations for the best-rated apps (18%). Nineteen PRISMA items were not reported by most (>85%) reviews, and 4 were modified by >30% of the reviews. Involvement of patient/public contributors (4%) or other stakeholders (11%) was infrequent. Overall, 34 candidate items and 10 subitems were identified to be considered for a new guideline.

Discussion and Conclusion

App reviews were inconsistently reported, and many PRISMA items were not deemed relevant. Consensus work is needed to revise and prioritize the candidate items for a reporting guideline for systematic app reviews.