Smart applications for diabetes management: A comprehensive survey and ranking

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Digital Health
• Mobile Health

Background:

• Diabetes management necessitates continuous monitoring of medication, diet, and exercise.
• Information and communication technology, particularly smartphone applications, offers novel solutions for disease management.
• Existing research lacks comprehensive rankings and feature correlation analysis for diabetes management apps.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a comprehensive analysis of current diabetes management smartphone applications.
• To identify key factors influencing user ratings and rankings of these applications.
• To evaluate and rank diabetes apps based on their features using a standardized metric.

Main Methods:

• Classification of diabetes mobile applications based on their features.
• Rigorous analysis of the top 15 diabetes management applications.
• Calculation of the normalized discounted cumulative gain (NDCG) score for app evaluation.
• Correlation analysis between app features, download counts, and user ratings.

Main Results:

• A weak correlation was observed between the number of app downloads and user ratings.
• The study identified specific features that contribute to higher user rankings.
• Mobile applications incorporating a data-sharing feature achieved higher NDCG scores.

Conclusions:

• Smartphone apps are valuable tools for diabetes management, but feature set significantly impacts user satisfaction and ranking.
• Data-sharing functionality emerges as a critical feature for enhancing the utility and perceived value of diabetes management apps.
• Future app development should prioritize features like data sharing to improve patient engagement and treatment outcomes.