# Visualisation of Information Using Patient Journey Maps for a Mobile Health Application
## 2 Review of Literature and Applications
### Mobile Health Applications  
Mobile healthcare applications (apps) can be broadly divided into two categories based on their target audience: those for healthcare providers and those for the general public, including patients [25]. Apps for healthcare providers are primarily developed for healthcare workers who provide healthcare services to patients. These apps facilitate EHR/EMR access, enable remote patient monitoring and telemedicine, allow for medication specifications, and aid healthcare professionals in providing recommendations for diagnosis and treatment. Apps for patients and other individuals include individual care apps (e.g., fitness, sports, games, and auto-diagnosis, which allow users to manage only the data that are generated directly by the user, such as steps, pulse, blood pressure, and sleep patterns), apps to check their PHRs, apps to contact their healthcare professionals, educational health apps, and social networking apps [25]. In this study, we propose a visualisation approach for analysing medical information in personal health management. To this end, we examined the medical information representation of seven mobile health apps that are used by patients and individuals in Korea: three hospital apps that were developed by large hospitals and four health management apps that require long-term recording of medical data, such as diet and blood pressure. We selected these apps with the aim of exploring how health information is presented depending on its source, i.e., health information provided directly by healthcare organisations and health information created and managed by individuals. The three hospital apps provide easy access to patient health information; they primarily import data from the hospital database, without the need for patients to create their own medical records and information. These apps are generally designed to facilitate smooth and efficient hospital care and provide features such as patient appointment scheduling, searching for doctors, scheduling and viewing of appointments, and viewing of personal patient information. In contrast, the four health management apps share information on specific diseases among users, such as diabetes and cancer, provide treatment directions for diseases according to the health information of an individual, and synthesise diet and exercise records in the form of reports. In these apps, the user must manually enter various types of health information, including their treatment stage, which may be inaccurate because the available information is limited and relies on personal input. The features that are provided by these apps include directional information on the treatment stages of various diseases, questions that are frequently asked by patients and their answers, exercise records, blood sugar levels, dietary recommendations, and personal health profiles. The aforementioned healthcare apps provide information on medical treatment and health records that are accumulated over time in an enumerated format, with time as the main axis (the information is not categorised by disease type). In particular, as the primary feature of a hospital app is the scheduling of medical appointments, information on these appointments (medical staff details, test items, office location, etc.) is presented according to a schedule. These healthcare apps display either the health records that are entered by the user over time on a calendar or the current stage of the disease treatment of the patient, with simple information mapped to that stage. However, this approach enumerates information that is collected over time; as a result, the user receives fragmented information. Moreover, most apps are dependent on specific medical institutions or healthcare devices. Therefore, only limited information is available, and the integration of PHRs and their presentation according to certain standards becomes arduous.