Nurses' Roles in mHealth App Development: Scoping Review

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Digital Health
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Mobile health (mHealth) apps are prevalent but often fail due to user-app misalignment.
• Nurses are strategically positioned to bridge this gap in mHealth development.
• The extent of nurses' involvement in mHealth app development is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the evidence on nurses' roles in mHealth app development.
• To identify the phases of app development where nurses are involved.
• To characterize the types of mHealth apps developed with nursing input.

Main Methods:

• A comprehensive scoping review methodology was employed.
• Searches across 14 databases and reference lists identified relevant publications.
• Data synthesis involved grouping by Software Development Life Cycle phases and app functionality scoring.

Main Results:

• 157 publications were analyzed, showing nurse involvement across all Software Development Life Cycle phases.
• Nurses most frequently participated in design, prototyping, requirements gathering, and testing.
• Nurses primarily acted as evaluators and subject matter experts, with infrequent roles in planning or software development.

Conclusions:

• Nurses are involved throughout the pre-implementation phases of mHealth app development.
• Their participation is concentrated in specific roles (evaluator, subject matter expert) and development stages.
• Further research may explore optimizing nurses' contributions across all development aspects.