Digital Era of Mobile Communications and Smartphones: A Novel Analysis of Patient Comprehension of Cancer-Related Information Available Through Mobile Applications.

Digital Era of Mobile Communications and Smartphones: A Novel Analysis of Patient Comprehension of Cancer-Related Information Available Through Mobile Applications. Cancer Invest. 2019 Mar 01;:1-7 Authors: Kim C, Prabhu AV, Hansberry DR, Agarwal N, Heron DE, Beriwal S Abstract Many Americans use smartphone-based mobile applications to acquire health information. Our study evaluated the readability of mobile application-based patient educational materials (PEMs) about five prevalent cancers in the United States. The Apple and Google mobile application marketplaces were queried for breast, colon, lung, prostate, and stomach cancer-related applications, which were subsequently screened for PEMs and assessed with 10 validated readability assessments. Twenty-one pertinent applications yielded 249 articles that were written at an 11.8 ± 2.3 grade level; only 12 (4.8%) articles were written below an eighth grade level. The majority of cancer-related PEMs were written at too difficult reading levels for American patients. PMID: 30821518 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cancer Investigation - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Cancer Invest Source Type: research