Health Apps by Design: A Reference Architecture for Mobile Engagement

The mobile health (mhealth) app market continues to grow rapidly. However, with the exception of fitness apps and a few isolated cases, most mhealth apps have not gained traction. The barriers preventing patients and care providers from using these apps include: for patients, information that contradicts health care provider advice, manual data entry procedures and poor fit with their treatment plan; for providers, distrust in unknown apps, lack of congruence with workflow, inability to integrate app data into their medical record system and challenges to analyze and visualize information effectively. In this article, the authors build upon previous work to define design requirements for quality mhealth apps and a framework for patient engagement to propose a new reference architecture for the next generation of healthcare mobile apps that increase the likelihood of being useful for and used by patients and health care providers alike.