Development and Examination of a Rubric for Evaluating Point-of-Care Medical Applications for Mobile Devices

• Published in: Medical reference services quarterly Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 75 - 87
• Main Authors: Butcher, Robyn, MacKinnon, Martin, Gadd, Kathleen, LeBlanc-Duchin, Denise
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Routledge 02.01.2015; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Cell Phone; Cellular telephones; Clinical decisions; content quality; Decision Support Systems, Clinical; diagnosis and treatment; Evaluation; evaluation rubric; Evaluation Studies as Topic; Health administration; Humans; medical resources; Medicine; Methods; Mobile Applications - standards; mobile devices; mobile medical apps; Point-of-Care Systems; point-of-care tools; Portable computers; Software; United States; usability; evaluation rubric; usability; Clinical decisions; diagnosis and treatment; medical resources; mobile devices; mobile medical apps; content quality; point-of-care tools
• ISSN: 0276-3869; 1540-9597
• DOI: 10.1080/02763869.2015.986794

The rapid development and updates of mobile medical resource applications (apps) highlight the need for an evaluation tool to assess the content of these resources. The purpose of the study was to develop and test a new evaluation rubric for medical resource apps. The evaluation rubric was designed using existing literature and through a collaborative effort between a hospital and an academic librarian. Testing found scores ranging from 23% to 88% for the apps. The evaluation rubric proved able to distinguish levels of quality within each content component of the apps, demonstrating potential for standardization of medical resource app evaluations.