Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jul 14, 2021
Date Accepted: Oct 27, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 8, 2021
Mobile Applications Leveraged in the COVID-19 Pandemic in East and South-East Asia: Review and Content Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic increased attention to digital tools to support governmental public health policies in East and South-East Asia. Mobile applications (apps) related to COVID-19 continue to emerge and evolve with a wide variety of characteristics and functions. However, there is a paucity of studies evaluating such apps in this region, with most of the available studies conducted in the early days of the pandemic.
Objective:
This study aimed to examine free apps developed or supported by governments in the East and South-East Asian region and highlight their key characteristics and functions. We also sought to interpret how the release dates of these apps were related to the commencement dates of other COVID-19 public health policies.
Methods:
We systematically searched for apps in Apple App Store and Google Play Store and analysed the contents of eligible apps. Mobile apps released or updated with COVID-19-related functions between 1 March 2020 and 7 May 2021 in Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China (mainland), Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines were included. The CoronaNet Research Project database was also examined to determine the timeline of public health policy commencement dates in relation to the release dates of the included apps. We assessed each mobile app's official website, media reports, and literature using content analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise relevant information gathered from the mobile apps using R studio.
Results:
Of the 1,943 mobile apps initially identified, 46 were eligible, with almost 70% of the mobile apps being intended for the general public. Most apps were from Vietnam (n=9, 20%), followed by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand (each n=6, 13%). Significantly, most apps for quarantine monitoring (n=6, 13%) were mandatory for the target users or a population subset. The most common function was health monitoring (n=32/46, 70%), followed by raising public health awareness (n=19/46, 41%) through education and information dissemination. Other functions included monitoring quarantine (n=12/46, 26%), providing health resources (n=12/46, 26%). COVID-19 vaccination management functions began to appear in parallel to vaccination rollout (n=7/46, 15%). Regarding the timing of introducing mobile solutions, the majority of mobile apps emerged close to the commencement dates of other public health policies in the early stages of the pandemic between March and April 2020.
Conclusions:
In East and South-East Asia, most governments employed mobile health apps as adjuncts to public health measures for tracking COVID-19 cases and delivering credible information. In addition, these apps have evolved by expanding their functions for COVID-19 vaccination.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.