Patient and societal indicators for mHealth apps' evaluation using Health Technology Assessment framework

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is an evaluation and decision-support tool used by healthcare decisionmakers, payers, and policymakers to inform decisions regarding the adoption, reimbursement, and utilization of health technologies. mHealth apps offer new ways of prognosis and treatment and their use is rapidly growing. Yet, they need to undergo an HTA process to justify their credibility, usability and acceptance. The aim of this study is to analyze specific domains of the HTA framework and tailor them to mHealth apps by considering patient and societal perspectives retrieved from app store information and analytics. An example of the mental mHealth apps is examined to showcase the factors affecting patients' engagement and a specific mental mHealth app performance is benchmarked against overall sector's (mental mHealth apps) and immediate competitors' performance and user preferences. This is achieved through in-depth analysis of the observed features and market characteristics of 172 mental mHealth apps and the associations observed among user preferences and app capabilities/features. The study aims to provide guidance to HTA agencies for rigorous evaluation of mHealth apps and app developers for complying with required standards and user preferences.