Usage Patterns of a Mobile Palliative Care Application

Fast Facts Mobile (FFM) was created to be a convenient way for clinicians to access the Fast Facts and Concepts database of palliative care articles on a smartphone or tablet device. We analyzed usage patterns of FFM through an integrated analytics platform on the mobile versions of the FFM application.

The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the usage data from FFM as a way to better understand user behavior for FFM as a palliative care educational tool.

This is an exploratory, retrospective analysis of de-identified analytics data collected through the iOS and Android versions of FFM captured from November 2015 to November 2016.

FFM App download statistics from November 1, 2015, to November 1, 2016, were accessed from the Apple and Google development websites. Further FFM session data were obtained from the analytics platform built into FFM.

FFM was downloaded 9409 times over the year with 201,383 articles accessed. The most searched-for terms in FFM include the following: nausea, methadone, and delirium. We compared frequent users of FFM to infrequent users of FFM and found that 13% of all users comprise 66% of all activity in the application.

Demand for useful and scalable tools for both primary palliative care and specialty palliative care will likely continue to grow. Understanding the usage patterns for FFM has the potential to inform the development of future versions of Fast Facts. Further studies of mobile palliative care educational tools will be needed to further define the impact of these educational tools.