Measuring User Experience for the use of Digital Health Apps

"ORCHA (Organisation for the Regulation of Health and Care Applications) are the world's leading Digital Health Application assessment group, with over 4,000 Apps currently live on the platform ([https://www.orcha.co.uk/][0]). ORCHA aim to drive the uptake of Digital Health Applications by providing reliable assessments of Apps available on the Apple and Google App Stores. This provides transparency to Care Providers, Clinicians and Patients by allowing them to be more confident when choosing a Digital Health solution that best fits their needs.

ORCHA evaluates apps by evaluating three key areas; Data Security, Clinical Assurance and User Experience. Data Security looks at what information an App collects from you, what it does with that information and how secure is its handling of that data. For some Apps this is only a minor issue as they don't gather much information. Other Apps can gather lots of very personal and sensitive information and for these it is important to know how they go about handling this. Clinical Assurance focuses on what evidence there is that there is a suitably qualified professional or organisation behind the App or that it has been endorsed, accredited or underwritten by such an individual or organisation. It also assesses what evidence there is around user testing and the Assurance of the App in terms of claimed health benefits. Finally, User Experience (UX) looks at how an App has been designed to support the overall user experience. This includes its availability on both primary platforms, how customisable the App is, how well it caters for end users with different capabilities and needs -- such as visual or other impairments -- how content is managed, how well supported the App is and what it costs. This area also looks at overall User Review scores from both platforms.

User Experience for Digital Health Apps is unique in the sense that it should consider the users health status and their expectation for improvement or information regarding a health condition. ORCHA aims to solve this problem by improving its UX measure to take into account multiple different data sources such as public feedback, social media and App Developer usage data to create a new, more representative measure of UX. ORCHA hope this will further improve it's capability to provide transparency and assurance to all users of Digital Health Applications.