Urs-Vito Albrecht*, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany Ute von Jan, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany Andrea Gonnermann, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Mobile & Tablet Health Applications Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Evidence based recommendations, founded on well-researched clinical trials, significantly help health care personnel with managing patients. The overwhelming number of published clinical trials makes it hard to keep track of available information related to diagnostic procedures or treatments of specific disorders. Nowadays, health providers dealing with patients with specific diseases can also look up information in mobile references apps, e.g. running on smart phones. Nevertheless, available apps often do not provide satisfying information about the underlying data; selection criteria for assessing the quality of the presented information are often not disclosed. If the authors of such apps do provide this information or name the limitations, ethical problems may arise.

Methods: To enhance transparency of apps and other electronic media making use of Evidence based Medicine content, we plead for an initiative for developing a guideline for Appropriate Reporting of EbM Content In Electronic Media (APPRECIEM). Our proposal includes structures and contents from other existing and well-established guidelines as well as handbooks, namely CONSORT, PRISMA, Cochrane Collaboration and others. An exemplary drafted guideline for discussion.

Results: For structuring purposes, our drafted guideline is subdivided into three levels that either adopt or follow the strucutre of pre-existing guidelines.

Level I considers the global (App) level and deals with aspects that most guidelines do not cover sufficiently. For this purpose, a recently published standardized app synopsis for the reporting of regulated and non-regulated mobile medical apps can be used that invites developers and distributors to provide users with the necessary information.

The focus of level II is on the provided content. Our guideline targets apps that refer to common EbM strategies, e.g. those based on systematic reviews (SR). Some recommendations valid in the context of SRs, i.e. extraction and distribution of information in a summarized form, are also applicable for apps that aim at providing information “on the go” and recommend additional content, e.g. by linking to appropriate clinical practice guidelines. The presented information can be highly biased (publication bias etc.), necessitating a rating instrument. The PRISMA-statement, which is also referenced by the Cochrane Collaboration, is a well-established guideline applicable for this purpose. This instrument was adopted in level 2.

Level III is the study level. Information provided by studies and other sources should always be presented in a clear and structured way, which conforms to the aims of existing statements such as the CONSORT-statement. Additional items specified for this level as well as the “complete” guidelines will be a product of the discussion process for APPRECIEM.

Conclusion: Analogous to a checklist, the proposed structure remains simple but can only be seen as a first step towards well-validated guidelines. The next step will be to invite experts from relevant fields to participate in the initiative group or to serve as members of a review board. For providing information, transparency of the development process as well as discussion and documentation purposes we have established the website http://appreciem-statement.org/ and welcome interested individuals to participate.