Persian mHealth Apps: A Cross Sectional Study Based on Use Case Classification

Mobile health apps play an important role in healthcare processes and health promotion. In recent years many Persian mhealth apps were developed and are available in various national app markets. Cafebazaar is the largest Persian app store that contains more than 3500 android apps in medical and health & fitness categories. In this study some characteristics of 200 top Persian medical apps of Cafebazaar were investigated and then categorized by their use cases. Results showed that only 6% of apps declare the involvement of at least one health professional in the conception or development of the apps. In 35% of studied apps, no contact information was provided for the users and 10.5% applied reliable sources for their content. 13 distinct use cases were found in all 200 apps of which two were new to an already published use-case model. This study shows that Persian mHealth apps, like other existing apps in the world, have a long way to improve and reach some basic standards. Lack of regulatory agencies and absence of a dynamic evaluation system for mHealth apps might be the main reason of these defects. This study also shows that 20 use cases existing in international health related apps are not yet used in Persian apps and therefore there is a reach potential of creating new apps in mHealth field.