Enlight: A Comprehensive Quality and Therapeutic Potential Evaluation Tool for Mobile and Web-Based eHealth...

Area of Science:

• Digital Health Evaluation
• eHealth Intervention Assessment
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Current eHealth assessment tools lack constructs like persuasive design and therapeutic alliance.
• The generalizability of existing eHealth evaluation tools has not been thoroughly examined.
• Objective evaluation of eHealth interventions requires comprehensive quality constructs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Enlight suite of measures for eHealth intervention evaluation.
• To incorporate persuasive design and therapeutic alliance into assessment tools.
• To address generalizability aspects in eHealth program evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a systematic review to identify quality rating criteria (PRISMA statement).
• Developed the Enlight suite by categorizing identified criteria.
• Tested Enlight on 42 mobile apps and 42 web-based programs.

Main Results:

• Enlight incorporates 476 criteria from 99 sources, covering quality assessments and checklists.
• Demonstrated excellent interrater reliability (median .91) and internal consistency (median .88).
• Found therapeutic persuasiveness and alliance scores strongly correlate with user engagement and content quality.

Conclusions:

• Enlight shows potential for evaluating eHealth programs across delivery mediums and clinical aims.
• Empirical evidence supports the importance of persuasive design and therapeutic alliance in eHealth.
• Reliability metrics and validity analysis indicate Enlight's utility for objective eHealth assessment.