A Preliminary Survey of Knowledge Discovery on Smartphone Applications (apps): Principles, Techniques and Research Directions for E-health <s> INTRODUCTION <s> Errol Ozdalga and colleagues recently highlighted the impressive range of roles and uses of smartphones in the medical setting [1]. An important point highlighted and worth developing from this paper is the difficulties associated with accurately comparing and assessing different medical apps for smartphones. This is mainly due to the fact that medical apps are often designed with one particular focus and inherently different interfaces which often make a direct comparison between apps unfeasible. Furthermore, even apps that purport to complete the same task often include extra functionality or features that make direct evaluation impossible. One solution offered by Ozdalga et al is to survey doctors on the perceived impact of specific apps available. However I believe that this is unfeasible given the rate at which the medical app ecosystem is evolving in terms of number, range, and type of app. With thousands of medical apps available, it is highly improbable that a clinician has a working knowledge of the complete range available. As such, any surveys will be subjective depending on the target audience and consequently offer limited utility for physicians and medical students alike. Moreover, surveys regarding specific apps are usually out of date by the time they are published. What is more important, is establishing a systematic method by which medical apps can be compared and their utility for health care professionals validated. ::: ::: ::: ::: One proposed method to solve this is to develop a set of standard criteria that can be used to systematically assess the utility of a medical app for a health care professional. I believe that the most efficient and effective method should be based on a self-certification system with key criteria that have been adapted from the Health on the Net foundation (HON, [2]). Table 1 shows potential self-certification criteria which medical apps could be reasonably expected to achieve in order to establish the validity of the information contained within the app. The Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) for medical and health websites addresses one of Internet's main health care issues: the reliability and credibility of information. It is therefore highly applicable to medical apps that are subject to the same issues. ::: ::: ::: ::: Table 1 ::: ::: A list of potential criteria based on the HONcode to be used as the basis of a self-certification model for medical apps. ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: Using this system, it would then possible to set up a self-certification process where registered developers could highlight the fact that their app conforms to these basic criteria. At the moment, no such organization exists although there is clearly scope for such an entity. With the impending launch of the United Kingdom National Health Service App Store, it appears that there has never been a better time to develop a self-certification model for medical apps. <s> BIB001 </s> A Preliminary Survey of Knowledge Discovery on Smartphone Applications (apps): Principles, Techniques and Research Directions for E-health <s> INTRODUCTION <s> Smartphones and tablet computers have become an integral part of our lives. One of their key features is the possibility of installing third-party apps. These apps can be very helpful for improving health and healthcare. However, medical professionals and citizens are currently being overloaded with health apps. Consequently, they will have difficulty with finding the right app, and information and features are fragmented over too many apps, thereby limiting their usefulness. In order to combat health app overload, suppliers of apps need to do three things. One, join the open source movement, so that a few apps can work as gateway to medical information by incorporating information from different sources. Two, standardize content, so that the information provided via apps is readable. And third, in order to prevent information overload from occurring within an app, content should be personalized towards an individual’s characteristics and context. Suppliers of medical information and features need to join the open source movement and must make use of standardized medical information formats, in order to allow third parties to create valuable, mobile gateway apps. This can prevent the occurrence of health app overload. By going along in these trends, we can make health apps achieve the impact on healthcare quality and citizens’ health many of us envision. <s> BIB002 </s> A Preliminary Survey of Knowledge Discovery on Smartphone Applications (apps): Principles, Techniques and Research Directions for E-health <s> INTRODUCTION <s> BACKGROUND ::: There are thousands of medical applications for mobile devices targeting use by healthcare professionals. However, several factors related to the structure of the existing market for medical applications create significant barriers preventing practitioners from effectively identifying mobile medical applications for individual professional use. ::: ::: ::: AIMS ::: To define existing market factors relevant to selection of medical applications and describe a framework to empower clinicians to identify, assess and utilise mobile medical applications in their own practice. ::: ::: ::: MATERIALS AND METHODS ::: Resources available on the Internet regarding mobile medical applications, guidelines and published research on mobile medical applications. ::: ::: ::: RESULTS ::: Mobile application stores (e.g. iTunes, Google Play) are not effective means of identifying mobile medical applications. Users of mobile devices that desire to implement mobile medical applications into practice need to carefully assess individual applications prior to utilisation. ::: ::: ::: DISCUSSION ::: Searching and identifying mobile medical applications requires clinicians to utilise multiple references to determine what application is best for their individual practice methods. This can be done with a cursory exploration of mobile application stores and then moving onto other available resources published in the literature or through Internet resources (e.g. blogs, medical websites, social media). Clinicians must also take steps to ensure that an identified mobile application can be integrated into practice after carefully reviewing it themselves. ::: ::: ::: CONCLUSION ::: Clinicians seeking to identify mobile medical application for use in their individual practice should use a combination of app stores, published literature, web-based resources, and personal review to ensure safe and appropriate use. <s> BIB003
A rapid development of smart phone applications (hereafter referred to as "apps" per the popular usage and for brevity) has brought many business opportunities for their suppliers and relevant stakeholders. However, this rapid development also causes many potential problems for their users. For example, for health apps, how to guarantee the quality of these products particularly as serious concerns regarding the safety and validity of the information offered users thereby have arisen in recent years  BIB001 . Recently, there are several principles under discussion to ascertain the quality of medical mobile apps for the public, for instance, regulations drafted by U.S. FDA  and selected principles from HONcode  by TL BIB001 . However, none of these relevant principles are applied to regulation of the smart phone applications market for the benefits of consumer health. In addition, the large volume of information may present challenges for the public to distinguish good from suboptimal advice. Therefore, we can conclude that how to ensure the right health apps for the right person at the right time and place has always been a challenge  BIB001 BIB002 BIB003 . This study aims to review possible techniques, applications and principles which can be used for clustering, validating and classifying health smart phone apps across vendor markets and discuss how to develop relevant studies that facilitate consumers' search and selection of e-health apps thus contributing to the greater public health in the near future. In addition, this study is a first study to explore knowledge discovery via health apps which provides many unique research insights from different perspectives (e.g., social network analysis approach) to broaden the scope of this line of research.