Guido Giunti

Guido Giunti, Diego H Giunta, Santiago Hors-Fraile et al.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women both in developed and developing countries. More than half of all cancer mobile application concern breast cancer. Gamification is widely used in mobile software applications created for health-related services. Current prevalence of gamification in breast cancer apps is unknown and detection must be manually performed. The purpose of this study is to describe and produce a tool allowing automatic detection of apps which contain gamification elements and thus empowering researchers to study gamification using large data samples. Predictive logistic regression model was designed on data extracted from breast cancer apps' title and description text available in app stores. Model was validated comparing estimated and benchmark values, observed by gamification specialists. Study's outcome can be applied as a screening tool to efficiently identify gamification presence in breast cancer apps for further research.

Guido Giunti, Estefania Guisado-Fernandez, Brian Caulfield

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable, often disabling disease that can adversely affect any body function; this often requires persons with MS to be active patients who are able to self-manage. There are currently thousands of health applications available but it is unknown how many concern MS. We conducted a systematic review of all MS apps present in the most popular app stores (iTunes and Google Play store) on June 2016 to identify all relevant MS apps. After discarding non-MS related apps and duplicates, only a total of 25 MS apps were identified. App description contents and features were explored to assess target audience, functionalities, and developing entities. The vast majority of apps were focused on disease and treatment information with disease management being a close second. This is the first study that reviews MS apps and it highlights an interesting gap in the current repertoire of MS mHealth resources.