Developing and validating a content quality evaluation tool for cancer mobile applications

Cancer remains a leading cause of death, underscoring the importance of reliable health apps. This study aims to design and validate a content quality evaluation tool for cancer mobile applications ensuring they provide standard services and features to users. This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in steps including identifying mobile application contents, designing and validating evaluation tool. Studies published until February 19, 2023, in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Scientific Information Database (SID) databases, as well as mobile applications in Myket, Bazaar, and Google Play, were searched. Data extraction and expert panel validation followed, leading to four expert sessions to design the tool. Nineteen oncologists, health information management and medical informatics specialties were included in the study as a research community. The tool’s face validity, content validity and reliability were assessed using CVR (Content Validity Ratio), CVI (Content Validity Index), and Cronbach’s alpha respectively. Out of 242 initial search results in databases and 125 mobile applications in app stores, 25 articles and 20 mobile applications included based on the search limits. The designed tools consist of 8 main themes (prevention, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, education, communication, requests/order and other) with 43 question items. All items received scores above 0.79 in CVI and 0.42 in CVR, leading to their approval and the reliability of the tool was accepted with a score of 0.967. Evaluating cancer mobile applications can be very helpful in developing useful and supportive mobile apps, and assist health policymakers in identifying and recommending high-quality cancer-related apps. This will enable patients to choose the most suitable apps, enhancing the quality of cancer care.