The function and quality of individual epidemic prevention and control apps during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review of Chinese apps

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic that has driven the widespread use of applications (apps) for outbreak management in China, but the characteristics and quality of these apps are currently unknown. OBJECTIVE: The first objective of this study was to investigate the functional characteristics of individual epidemic prevention and control apps in China, and the second objective was to evaluate the quality of these apps. METHODS: We searched the Qimai(TM) mobile application data analysis platform and the Aladdin(TM) WeChat applet data analysis platform with keywords and quantified the search results based on the search index, relevance, and the Aladdin index to identify apps with high public popularity. The quality of the apps was rated by 2 independent raters using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between raters was used as a measure of interrater reliability. RESULTS: All 20 of the included apps had acceptable quality. Functionality had the highest score, followed by information quality, aesthetics, and engagement. There were no significant differences between the independent apps and WeChat applets in app quality (t = 1.907, p = 0.073) and subjective quality (t = 0.899, p = 0.381). These apps were related to COVID-19 individual prevention and control, and the functional features that contributed to the quality of the apps were grouped into six categories, i.e., health self-checking and reporting, news about COVID-19, scientific publicity and education, telemedicine services, personal travel inquiries, and digital contact tracing. CONCLUSIONS: Individual COVID-19 prevention and control apps in China were developed by adding epidemic prevention and control functions to existing social apps rather than independently developing apps. The overall quality of such apps was acceptable, but scores in the engagement section were generally low, especially for WeChat applets.