In Search of Mobile Health Apps Available for Pregnant Women: Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND Many pregnant women use the internet to obtain information about pregnancy and childbirth. Over 50% of pregnant women use pregnancy applications (apps) and must search through thousands of pregnancy or women's health-related apps available on app stores. COVID-19 is changing how women receive prenatal care. Mobile health apps may help maintain women's satisfaction with their prenatal care. OBJECTIVE Our objective is to identify pregnancy mobile apps and to evaluate the apps using a modified APPLICATIONS scoring system. METHODS A list of pregnancy apps was identified in the first 20 Google search results using the search term "pregnancy app." After excluding irrelevant, inaccurate, malfunctioning, or no longer available apps, all unique apps were downloaded and evaluated with the modified APPLICATION scoring system, which includes both objective and subjective criteria and evaluation of special features. RESULTS A total of 57 unique pregnancy apps were generated. After 28 apps were excluded, the remaining 29 apps were evaluated, with a mean score of 9.4 points out of a maximum of 16. The highest scoring app scored 15 points. Over 60% of apps were not comprehensive with information for every stage of pregnancy or did not contain all four desired components of pregnancy apps: health promotion/patient education, communication, health tracking, and notifications and reminders. Only 24% of apps included a text search field, and only 28% of apps cited literature. CONCLUSIONS Our search yielded many high-scoring apps, but few contained all desired components and features. These identified and rated apps can lessen the burden on pregnant women and providers to find available apps on their own. While healthcare providers should continue to vet apps before recommending them to patients, these findings also highlight that a Google search is a successful way for patients and providers to find useful and comprehensive pregnancy applications. CLINICALTRIAL