1776 - Examination of mobile applications on breast cancer

Background

Mobile phones and tablets currently represent a significant presence in people’s everyday lives. They enable access to different information and services independent of current place and time. Such widespread connectivity offers significant potential in different app areas including health care. Advancements in mobile technology allow innovative data collection techniques such as measuring time use for the purpose of improving health behavior change interventions.

Methods

The aim of this study is to examine the usage rates of healthcare users and the health content of applications. A total of 707 mobile app were retrieved through a Google and App store for app published between January to April 2019. In this context, all applications were scanned using "cancer", "oncology", and "breast cancer" keywords on these stores. Repetitive applications were removed and research data was obtained. The applications were evaluated by considering their contents, developers and download numbers.

Results

In the Google play store, under the training title of 268 applications, it was found that 76 applications were used to maintain the treatment scheme and plan, and 12 were used for communication purposes. In the app store, it was determined that 235 applications were used for education, 102 for treatment plan and order, and 14 for communication purposes. Educational applications were used for journal, congress, student information, cancer guidelines and patient information. Drug management for treatment regimen and plan was determined to be related to radiological imaging, diet follow-up, symptoms, and nutrition. It was seen that communication applications were used for both patient-patient and physician-patient interaction. It was found that only 8% of the existing applications that the majority of the application developers did not have a healthcare staff established a health care staff.

Conclusions

It can be said that health personnel develop their own systems and provide accurate information to patients through these systems. With the advancement of health technologies, healthy results can be obtained in the near future.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

Aydanur Aydin.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.