Developing a global assessment framework for health apps targeted at elderly users with Type 2 diabetes mellitus

The non-device health apps marketplace is a dynamic but confusing environment, which does not help the adoption of apps. The development of app assessment criteria that support evidence-based self-management of diabetes in this project will support industry, app developers, patients and health professionals in developing and using higher quality apps that are more aligned to intended purposes. Apps have the potential to bring convenience to self-care in patients with chronic illnesses, which may bring great benefits to population health at lower costs. Despite their promise, health apps usage is not included in national chronic care or diabetes guidelines worldwide due to challenges in their integration with the current health system, concerns of data privacy, app selection difficulty and undetermined reliability of the apps. 

Our objective is to prevent harmful health outcomes for the aging population due to the inadvertent use of low quality diabetes health apps.  To this end, we aim to develop a robust assessment framework to investigate the quality of health apps with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) as a use case.