Mobile Applications for Educating Patients, Caregivers, and Health Personnel on Patient Safety: A Scoping Review

To identify scientific evidence describing the development and/or use of mobile applications to support the education of health personnel, patients, and their caregivers, focusing on hospitalized patient safety. The review was conducted on 7 electronic databases: Medline, PubMed, Cochrane, Embase, Scopus, VHL, and Web of Science, in addition to gray literature. The study was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews. The final findings were presented regarding authorship, year of publication, country of origin, study objective, methodological design, sample and setting, mobile application development process, and main findings. Of the 1996 studies found, after removing duplicates, 1784 abstracts were evaluated. After evaluating the full texts, 12 studies were considered relevant, and discussed essential aspects of patient safety, such as drug administration and infection prevention, following the international patient safety goals. The analyzed mobile applications covered different types of content, such as serious games, educational videos, animations, and simulations. The analysis revealed a variety of approaches, including analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of the apps. Content validity and the usability of mobile applications were the main aspects investigated. There has been a growing development and use of mobile applications aimed at increasing knowledge about patient safety, showing a positive trend for educating the target audience. However, there is a lack of mobile applications that display attractive features for users.