In an era defined by the pervasive use of smartphones, the healthcare landscape has been dramatically reshaped by the proliferation of mobile applications. These apps offer unparalleled opportunities for rapid access to evidence-based information, instant communication, and improved organizational efficiency in healthcare. However, a significant challenge persists: the scarcity of critically appraised, evidence-based health apps developed or directly vetted by clinicians themselves. This gap is largely attributed to clinicians’ perceived lack of technical programming knowledge.
A groundbreaking paper, “Enabling Psychiatrists to be Mobile Phone App Developers: Insights Into App Development Methodologies” by Zhang et al., offers a pivotal solution to this problem. This essential research demystifies app development, presenting two freely available and user-friendly methodologies that empower busy clinicians to create their own Web-based mobile phone apps without needing any prior programming language knowledge.
The methodologies highlighted are:
- WordPress: Commonly known as a blogging site, WordPress is an online, open-source website creation tool. Clinicians can simply create an account, register a domain name, and modify content using its intuitive graphic user interface. Crucially, when an online portal developed with WordPress is accessed on a mobile phone, it automatically displays as an app, seamlessly bridging website creation with mobile deployment.
- iBuildApp: This online mobile Web-based app builder also features a graphic user interface that facilitates the immediate integration of various content types.
Both platforms enable the effortless integration of diverse content, including text-based material, interactive videos, and rich site summary (RSS) feeds for retrieving information from dedicated servers. They also support the integration of simple questionnaire surveys, which can be invaluable for research, education, or collecting user feedback. These tools are designed to allow clinicians to develop simple mobile Web-based apps specifically for academic, educational, and research purposes.
The article concretely demonstrates the feasibility and impact of these methodologies through the development of the “Mastering Psychiatry” Web-based app. This innovative app converted an online electronic psychiatry textbook into a mobile format for medical students rotating through psychiatry in Singapore. The WordPress-developed online portal featured a newly written textbook integrating local clinical guidelines, alongside videos demonstrating patient assessment and psychopathology elicitation. It also included an interactive multiple-choice survey for rapid revision. The iBuildApp version served as a practical clinical reference, mirroring the online content.
Since its launch, the “Mastering Psychiatry” app and online portal have seen remarkable engagement, with a cumulative total of 21,991 unique users accessing the online portal and 722 users utilizing the mobile app. A user perspective survey (n=185) revealed overwhelmingly positive feedback, with a high proportion of students (95.2%) finding a psychiatry mobile phone app useful, particularly when it contained textbook content and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) videos. A significant majority (71.4%) agreed that such an app would be a valuable companion to a traditional textbook. This strong positive reception confirms the utility of these self-developed apps as effective tools for mastering psychiatry on the go.
This pioneering research offers crucial advantages for the future of mHealth. By empowering clinicians to create their own digital resources, it paves the way for more evidence-based mobile phone apps, ensuring that healthcare information delivered via mobile platforms is accurate, credible, and clinician-appraised. These in-house developed apps boast low development costs, rapid creation times, and the ability to address specific educational or clinical deficiencies. Furthermore, apps built using these methodologies are cross-compliant across various platforms and devices, enhancing accessibility for a wider audience. While acknowledging limitations such as restricted interactive features and challenges with conventional app store dissemination, the study emphasizes the profound benefits and calls for continued efforts to refine these accessible development pathways.
This article represents a vital step toward integrating direct clinician expertise into the mobile health ecosystem, promising a future rich with credible, relevant, and clinician-approved digital tools for medical education, practice, and research.
Reference for the article:
Zhang, M. W. B., Tsang, T., Cheow, E., Ho, C. S. H., Yeong, N. B., & Ho, R. C. M. (2014). Enabling psychiatrists to be mobile phone app developers: Insights into app development methodologies. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2(4), e53. https://doi.org/10.2196/mhealth.3425