mHealth Quality: A Process to Seal the Qualified Mobile Health Apps.

A large number of mobile health applications (apps) are currently available with a variety of functionalities. The user ratings in the app stores seem not to be reliable to determine the quality of the apps. The traditional methods of evaluation are not suitable for fast paced nature of mobile technology. In this study, we propose a collaborative multidimensional scale to assess the quality of mHealth apps. During our process, the app quality is assessed in various aspects including medical reliability, legal consistency, ethical consistency, usability aspects, personal data privacy and IT security. A hypothetico-deductive approach was used in various working groups to define the audit criteria based on the various use cases that an app could provide. These criteria were then implemented into a web based self-administered questionnaires and the generation of automatic reports were considered. This method is on the one hand specific to each app because it allows to assess each health app according to its offered functionalities. On the other hand, this method is automatic, transferable to all apps and adapted to the dynamic nature of mobile technology.

LEGAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF eHEALTH IN FRANCE.

Although the potential of eHealth in terms of improving quality, safety, efficacy and efficiency of health systems is known, the development of these new tools remains insufficient in Europe and also in France - the focus of the present article - due to the legal status of telemedicine and state involvement. National legislation should be harmonized by directives or standardized by regulations. European unification would considerably reduce the burden of administrative formalities that hold back telemedicine in France, and would lead to the emergence of community-based, non-hospital-dependent eHealth projects, in line with recommendations in the literature. The creation of cooperation protocols and the formal recognition of the patient's role via therapeutic education are valuable tools for achieving this goal. It would be an error to dismiss these tools because of the overly rigid regulations, especially now that financial incentives are shifting from cure to care.