A General mHealth Design Pipeline

The use of smartphones technologies and apps in health has become increasing popular in recent years and as such has led to the development of the mobile health (mHealth) sector. However, mobile health applications (apps) are often rejected in app stores or not utilised by the intended audience. This has led to much discussion about the review processes, certification, and considerations required to develop a mHealth app for successful deployment. In this paper, we describe a general design pipeline to be used for the creation of mHealth apps. The pipeline considers and makes recommendations for the design of the following in a mHealth app: Preparation, Back-End Development, Front-End Development and Deployment.