An Evaluation of Released mHealth Apps in Popular Iranian App Stores

Background: The rapid growth in development and using mobile health application had significant potential in health education, prevention of disease, fitness and self-monitoring. Objectives: The study objective was to describe factors of released apps in Iranian app stores and compare mHealth applications in different subcategories. Materials/Patients and Methods: We focused on “Cafebazaar” and “Sibche” as the most popular Iranian android and IOS app stores. We extracted detailed information of android mHealth apps in “health” and “medicine” categories from “Cafebazaar”. IOS health apps in “health and wellness” category were gathered from “Sibche” app store. The apps were categorized by subject and descriptive analyses were done. Results: 3331 android and 277 IOS apps were remained for study. The average price of paid apps in Cafebazaar and Sibche app stores were $0.37 and $6.55. Top 200 most popular mHealth apps from each app store were selected and based on topics categorized in 10 subcategories. The average of rating value for all android subcategories (total average 4.33) was higher than IOS subcategories (total average 3.58). A majority of popular android mHealth apps were free (88%) on the other hand most popular IOS released apps were paid (70%). Information about accessibility to internet showed 77% of android and 51% of IOS apps used internet connection. Conclusion: App stores are the major distribution channel for mHealth apps and detailed statistical information of released apps like average of user rating value and number of user rating describe the behavior of mHealth application consumers which can be used for further business marketing. Our study confirmed fitness was one of the most popular topics in Iranian apps similar to published apps in Google play and Apple app store. We can see that the average of rating value for all android subcategories was higher than IOS subcategories. Its possible reason was most of IOS apps were not free and consumer expected higher quality. It seems large number of mHealth app users preferred using applications which can update their content continuously or have ability to synchronize their offline data.