Hospital-Owned Apps in Taiwan: Nationwide Survey
Autor: | Wui Chiang Lee, Shinn Jang Hwang, Hao Yen Liu, Ying Chou Sun, Jun Jeng Fen, Li Fang Chou, Tzeng Ji Chen |
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Rok vydání: | 2017 |
Předmět: |
Telemedicine
020205 medical informatics Download Taiwan Health Informatics 02 engineering and technology Information technology App store 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Health care mental disorders 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering medicine 030212 general & internal medicine Android (operating system) mHealth mobile apps Original Paper business.industry medicine.disease T58.5-58.64 Local community Mobile phone Medical emergency telemedicine Public aspects of medicine RA1-1270 business hospitals |
Zdroj: | JMIR mHealth and uHealth JMIR mHealth and uHealth, Vol 6, Iss 1, p e22 (2018) |
ISSN: | 2291-5222 |
Popis: | Background: Over the last decade, the use of mobile phone apps in the health care industry has grown rapidly. Owing to the high penetration rate of Internet use in Taiwan, hospitals are eager to provide their own apps to improve the accessibility of medical care for patients. Objective: The aims of this study were to provide an overview of the currently available hospital-owned apps in Taiwan and to conduct a cross-hospital comparison of app features. Methods: In May 2017, the availability of apps from all 414 hospitals in Taiwan was surveyed from the hospital home pages and the Google Play app store. The features of the downloaded apps were then examined in detail and, for each app, the release date of the last update, download frequency, and rating score were obtained from Google Play. Results: Among all the 414 hospitals in Taiwan, 150 (36.2%) owned Android apps that had been made available for public use, including 95% (18/19) of the academic medical centers, 77% (63/82) of the regional hospitals, and 22.0% (69/313) of the local community hospitals. Among the 13 different functionalities made available by the various hospital-owned apps, the most common were the doctor search (100%, 150/150), real-time queue monitoring (100%, 150/150), and online appointment scheduling (94.7%, 142/150) functionalities. The majority of apps (57.3%, 86/150) had a rating greater than 4 out of 5, 49.3% (74/150) had been updated at some point in 2017, and 36.0% (54/150) had been downloaded 10,000 to 50,000 times. Conclusions: More than one-third of the hospitals owned apps intended to increase patient access to health care. The most common app features might reflect the health care situation in Taiwan, where the overcrowded outpatient departments of hospitals operate in an open-access mode without any strict referral system. Further research should focus on the effectiveness and safety of these apps. [JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2018;6(1):e22] |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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