Review of interactive digital solutions improving health literacy of personal cancer risks in the general public

[en] Background: Health literacy is crucial in understanding the many risk factors for cancer. Low health literacy is associated with low adherence to medication, poor health status, and increased health care costs. Modern technology allows us to educate the general public on their risks. We focus herein on the available mobile applications and online web tools for the evaluation of cancer risk in the general public. Methods: A systematic search was performed for cancer risk calculators mobile applications on both Google Play and the App Store and for online cancer risk calculators using Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Baidu. Results: For mobile applications, out of 250 different apps found on GooglePlay, 16 Android applications were retained for evaluation in this review and for the AppStore, out of 10 different apps, 7 Android applications were retained for evaluation in this review. Only three apps were available for both Android and iOS systems. For web tools, a list of 20 tools was retained and evaluated. Conclusion: This review presents the most popular and prominent tools and their strengths and possible weaknesses are evaluated. We discuss not only its current state as it relates to general knowledge about cancer risks, but also barriers and future directions. It is imperative that as developers continue to create and improve such tools, health care providers remain aware of these efforts in order to properly guide patients towards appropriate resources and educate them on both their usefulness and limitations.

Disciplines :

Oncology

Author, co-author :

Westerlinck, Philippe ; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège - CHU > > Service médical de radiothérapie

Coucke, Philippe ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Unités de recherche interfacultaires > Research Unit for a life-Course perspective on Health and Education (RUCHE) ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences cliniques > Radiothérapie

Language :

English

Title :

Review of interactive digital solutions improving health literacy of personal cancer risks in the general public

Publication date :

30 August 2021

Journal title :

International Journal of Medical Informatics

ISSN :

1386-5056

Publisher :

Elsevier, Netherlands

Volume :

154

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Available on ORBi :

since 12 September 2022

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387 (4 by ULiège)

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