What's in the Store? A Review of Arabic Medical and Health Apps in the App Store

摘要

Mobile Health, also known as mHealth, is a fast growing business within eHealth. Health apps (mobile applications) are very popular today. There are thousands of apps available in Google Play Store, the iOS App Store, and other platforms. However, it is not an easy task to find reliable health apps. In fact, there are health apps that can be harmful (e.g. giving incorrect diagnosis and treatment suggestions). While there have been some studies on the quality of health-related language-specific mobile applications (e.g. English and Spanish apps), these studies are often limited to apps relating to certain keywords such as “cancer” or “diabetes”. This study is a comprehensive review of all apps available in Arabic in the “Medical” and “Health and Fitness” categories of the Android app store.