Mobile Health Apps That Act as Surgical Preparatory Guides: App Store Search and Quality Evaluation
Authors: Gadde Naga Sindhura , Yap Kevin Yi-Lwern 
Published: October 2021

Background

Mobile health (mHealth) apps are becoming increasingly common in surgical practices for training, education, and communication. Factors leading to increased delays, morbidity, and mortality in surgery include inadequate preoperative patient preparation due to a failure to identify patients and procedure details, and missing instruments and equipment required for the procedure. Many apps are available for supporting preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care. However, there is a lack of studies that assess the quality of apps that act as surgical preparatory guides.

Objective

The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of apps that act as surgical preparatory guides for operating room personnel through an in-house quality assessment tool.

Methods

The quality assessment tool comprises 35 questions categorized into 5 sections: (1) engagement (customization, interactivity, target audience; 19 points), (2) functionality (performance, ease of use, navigation; 12 points), (3) aesthetics (layout, visual appeal; 6 points), (4) information (quality and quantity of information, visual information, credibility; 29 points), and (5) privacy and security (4 points). An app search was conducted in the Australian Apple and Google Play stores using the following keywords: “surgical apps”, “surgical preferences”, “surgeon preferences”, “operating room”, and “perioperative procedures”. The overall total scores and scores for each section were reported as medians and IQRs, expressed as raw scores and percentages.

Results

A total of 5 unique apps were evaluated on both iOS and Android platforms. The median overall score across all apps was 35/70 (50%; IQR 38.6%-64.3%). ScrubUp (48/70, 69%) and MySurgeon (42/70, 60%) had the highest overall scores, followed by PrefCard (35/70, 50%) and Scrubnote (28/70, 40%). The lowest scoring app was BrainPadd (26/70, 37%). The sections with the highest median scores, in decreasing order, were privacy and security (4/4, 100%; IQR 75%-100%), aesthetics (5/6, 83%; IQR 75%-91.7%), engagement (15/19, 79%; IQR 57.9%-86.8%), functionality (7/12, 58%; IQR 29.2%-75%), and information (5/29, 17%; IQR 15.5%-34.5%). Most apps scored well (4/4, 100%) on privacy and security, except for Scrubnote (2/4, 50%). ScrubUp received a perfect score for aesthetics (6/6, 100%). MySurgeon (17/19, 90%) had the highest engagement score, while ScrubUp and MySurgeon had the highest functionality scores (9/12, 75% each). All apps scored below 50% for the information section, with ScrubUp having the highest score of 13/29 (45%).

Conclusions

ScrubUp and MySurgeon had the highest quality scores and can be used as adjuncts to hospital protocols by operating room personnel for their surgical preparation. Developers are encouraged to develop appropriate apps for surgical preparation based on relevant guidelines and standards, as well as the quality evaluation criteria in our tool. Operating room personnel can also use this tool as a guide to select and assess their preferred apps in their practices.