Mobile health applications: awareness, attitudes, and practices among medical students in Malaysia

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Abstract

Background

The popularity of mobile health (mHealth) applications (or apps) in the field of health and medical education is rapidly increasing, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to assess awareness, attitudes, practices, and factors associated with the mHealth app usage among medical students.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional study involving medical students at a government university in Sarawak, Malaysia, from February to April 2021. Validated questionnaires were administered to all consenting students. These questionnaires included questions on basic demographic information as well as awareness, attitude toward, and practices with mHealth apps concerned with medical education, health and fitness, and COVID-19 management.

Results

Respondents had favorable attitudes toward mHealth apps (medical education [61.8%], health and fitness [76.3%], and COVID-19 management [82.7%]). Respondents’ mean attitude scores were four out of five for all three app categories. However, respondents used COVID-19 management apps more frequently (73.5%) than those for medical education (35.7%) and fitness (39.0%). Usage of all three app categories was significantly associated with the respondent’s awareness and attitude. Respondents in the top 20% in term of household income and study duration were more likely to use medical education apps. The number of respondents who used COVID-19 apps was higher in the top 20% household income group than in the other income groups. The most common barrier to the use of apps was uncertainty regarding the most suitable apps to choose.

Conclusion

Our study highlighted a discrepancy between awareness of mHealth apps and positive attitudes toward them and their use. Recognition of barriers to using mHealth apps by relevant authorities may be necessary to increase the usage of these apps.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03603-4.

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Most cited references 53

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Mobile devices and apps for health care professionals: uses and benefits.

C Lee Ventola (2014)

Health care professionals' use of mobile devices is transforming clinical practice. Numerous medical software applications can now help with tasks ranging from information and time management to clinical decision-making at the point of care.

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Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical education: Medical students’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding electronic learning

Ahmed Alsoufi, Ali Alsuyihili, Ahmed Msherghi … (2020)

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused an unprecedented disruption in medical education and healthcare systems worldwide. The disease can cause life-threatening conditions and it presents challenges for medical education, as instructors must deliver lectures safely, while ensuring the integrity and continuity of the medical education process. It is therefore important to assess the usability of online learning methods, and to determine their feasibility and adequacy for medical students. We aimed to provide an overview of the situation experienced by medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of medical students regarding electronic medical education. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with medical students from more than 13 medical schools in Libya. A paper-based and online survey was conducted using email and social media. The survey requested demographic and socioeconomic information, as well as information related to medical online learning and electronic devices; medical education status during the COVID-19 pandemic; mental health assessments; and e-learning knowledge, attitudes, and practices. A total of 3,348 valid questionnaires were retrieved. Most respondents (64.7%) disagreed that e-learning could be implemented easily in Libya. While 54.1% of the respondents agreed that interactive discussion is achievable by means of e-learning. However, only 21.1% agreed that e-learning could be used for clinical aspects, as compared with 54.8% who disagreed with this statement and 24% who were neutral. Only 27.7% of the respondents had participated in online medical educational programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, while 65% reported using the internet for participating in study groups and discussions. There is no vaccine for COVID-19 yet. As such, the pandemic will undeniably continue to disrupt medical education and training. As we face the prospect of a second wave of virus transmission, we must take certain measures and make changes to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on medical education and on the progression of training. The time for change is now, and there should be support and enthusiasm for providing valid solutions to reduce this disruption, such as online training and virtual clinical experience. These measures could then be followed by hands-on experience that is provided in a safe environment.

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Mobile medical and health apps: state of the art, concerns, regulatory control and certification

Maged N Kamel Boulos, Ann C. Brewer, Chante Karimkhani … (2014)

This paper examines the state of the art in mobile clinical and health-related apps. A 2012 estimate puts the number of health-related apps at no fewer than 40,000, as healthcare professionals and consumers continue to express concerns about the quality of many apps, calling for some form of app regulatory control or certification to be put in place. We describe the range of apps on offer as of 2013, and then present a brief survey of evaluation studies of medical and health-related apps that have been conducted to date, covering a range of clinical disciplines and topics. Our survey includes studies that highlighted risks, negative issues and worrying deficiencies in existing apps. We discuss the concept of ‘apps as a medical device’ and the relevant regulatory controls that apply in USA and Europe, offering examples of apps that have been formally approved using these mechanisms. We describe the online Health Apps Library run by the National Health Service in England and the calls for a vetted medical and health app store. We discuss the ingredients for successful apps beyond the rather narrow definition of ‘apps as a medical device’. These ingredients cover app content quality, usability, the need to match apps to consumers’ general and health literacy levels, device connectivity standards (for apps that connect to glucometers, blood pressure monitors, etc.), as well as app security and user privacy. ‘Happtique Health App Certification Program’ (HACP), a voluntary app certification scheme, successfully captures most of these desiderata, but is solely focused on apps targeting the US market. HACP, while very welcome, is in ways reminiscent of the early days of the Web, when many “similar” quality benchmarking tools and codes of conduct for information publishers were proposed to appraise and rate online medical and health information. It is probably impossible to rate and police every app on offer today, much like in those early days of the Web, when people quickly realised the same regarding informational Web pages. The best first line of defence was, is, and will always be to educate consumers regarding the potentially harmful content of (some) apps.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Pin Fen Chua: fcpin@unimas.my

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Educ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Educ

Title: BMC Medical Education

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6920

Publication date (Electronic): 15 July 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 15 July 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 544

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.412253.3, ISNI 0000 0000 9534 9846, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, , Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kota Saramahan, ; Sarawak, Malaysia

[2 ]Digital Health Research and Innovation, Institute for Clinical Research, National Institutes of Health Malaysia, Shah Alam, Malaysia

Article

Publisher ID: 3603

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03603-4

PMC ID: 9282901

PubMed ID: 35836223

SO-VID: 6f66c0ef-81c8-46d8-ac2e-20e30f0fe5ad

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 27 March 2022

Date accepted : 6 July 2022

Funding

Funded by: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

Open Access :

Open Access funding provided by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: applications,covid-19,health and fitness,medical education,mobile health

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: applications, covid-19, health and fitness, medical education, mobile health

Mobile health applications: awareness, attitudes, and practices among medical students in Malaysia

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Background

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Supplementary Information

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 53

Mobile devices and apps for health care professionals: uses and benefits.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical education: Medical students’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding electronic learning

Mobile medical and health apps: state of the art, concerns, regulatory control and certification

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