Smartphone as a Disease Screening Tool: A Systematic Review.

Disease screening identifies a disease in an individual/community early to effectively prevent or treat the condition. COVID-19 has restricted hospital visits for screening and other healthcare services resulting in the disruption of screening for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Smartphone technologies, coupled with built-in sensors and wireless technologies, enable the smartphone to function as a disease-screening and monitoring device with negligible additional costs and potentially higher quality results. Thus, we sought to evaluate the use of smartphone applications for disease screening and the acceptability of this technology in the medical and healthcare sectors. We followed a systematic review process using four databases, including Medline Complete, Web of Science, Embase, and Proquest. We included articles published in English examining smartphone application utilisation in disease screening. Further, we presented and discussed the primary outcomes of the research articles and their statistically significant value. The initial search yielded 1046 studies for the initial title and abstract screening. Of the 105 articles eligible for full-text screening, we selected nine studies and discussed them in detail under four main categories: an overview of the literature reviewed, participant characteristics, disease screening, and technology acceptance. According to our objective, we further evaluated the disease-screening approaches and classified them as clinically administered screening (33%, n = 3), health-worker-administered screening (33%, n = 3), and home-based screening (33%, n = 3). Finally, we analysed the technology acceptance among the users and healthcare practitioners. We observed a significant statistical relationship between smartphone applications and standard clinical screening. We also reviewed user acceptance of these smartphone applications. Hence, we set out critical considerations to provide equitable healthcare solutions without barriers when designing, developing, and deploying smartphone solutions. The findings may increase research opportunities for the evaluation of smartphone solutions as valid and reliable screening solutions.

Application of Smartphone Technologies in Disease Monitoring: A Systematic Review.

Technologies play an essential role in monitoring, managing, and self-management of chronic diseases. Since chronic patients rely on life-long healthcare systems and the current COVID-19 pandemic has placed limits on hospital care, there is a need to explore disease monitoring and management technologies and examine their acceptance by chronic patients. We systematically examined the use of smartphone applications (apps) in chronic disease monitoring and management in databases, namely, Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and Proquest, published from 2010 to 2020. Results showed that app-based weight management programs had a significant effect on healthy eating and physical activity (p = 0.002), eating behaviours (p < 0.001) and dietary intake pattern (p < 0.001), decreased mean body weight (p = 0.008), mean Body Mass Index (BMI) (p = 0.002) and mean waist circumference (p < 0.001). App intervention assisted in decreasing the stress levels (paired t-test = 3.18; p < 0.05). Among cancer patients, we observed a high acceptance of technology (76%) and a moderately positive correlation between non-invasive electronic monitoring data and questionnaire (r = 0.6, p < 0.0001). We found a significant relationship between app use and standard clinical evaluation and high acceptance of the use of apps to monitor the disease. Our findings provide insights into critical issues, including technology acceptance along with regulatory guidelines to be considered when designing, developing, and deploying smartphone solutions targeted for chronic patients.