Usability Evaluation of Alzheimer’s mHealth Applications for Caregivers

摘要

As the sixth leading cause of death within the United States, Alzheimer’s disease affects over 15 millioncaregivers administering home-based care for loved ones having this illness. The rise in advocacy formobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) to facilitate chronic disease management presents atremendous platform for Alzheimer’s caregivers to utilize mHealth apps while administering care.Although mHealth apps serve as potential healthcare interventions, little is known regarding their usability.This study will advance knowledge on the apps’ usability and provide user-centered design guidelines forfuture app development. Keyword searches in Apple and Google App Stores yielded 43 Alzheimer’s apps.Card sorting then generated three levels of categories for app classification. Stratified random samplingproduced a sample size of six apps selected for review. Lastly, a heuristic evaluation of the six sampledapps was conducted according to Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics. User-centered design guidelines wereconstructed to remedy problematic usability issues for the intended users of these apps.