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Smartphone Applications to Perform Body Balance Assessment: a Standardized Review

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Body balance disorders are related to different injuries that contribute to a wide range of healthcare issues. The social and financial costs of these conditions are high. Therefore, quick and reliable body balance assessment can contribute to the prevention of injuries, as well as enhancement of clinical rehabilitation. Moreover, the use of smartphone applications is increasing rapidly since they incorporate different hardware components that allow for body balance assessment. The present study aims to show an analysis of the current applications available on Google Play StoreTM and iTunes App StoreTM to measure this physical condition, using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS). Three iOS and two Android applications met the inclusion criteria. Three applications have scientific support, Balance test YMED, Balance Test by Slani, and Sway. Furthermore, according to MARS, the main scores for each evaluated domain were: Engagement (2.04), Functionality (3.8), Esthetics (3.53), and Information (3.80). The reviewed applications targeted to assess body balance obtained good mean scores. Sway is the app with highest scores in each MARS domain, followed by iBalance Fitness and Gyrobalance.

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Funding

This study was funded by FEDER funds in the Spanish Department for Economy and Competitiveness project (TIN2016-75850-R) and University of Cadiz project (PR2016-026).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nursing and Physiotherapy, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

    Jose A. Moral-Munoz

  2. Institute of Research and Innovation in Biomedical Sciences of the Province of Cádiz (INiBICA), University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

    Jose A. Moral-Munoz

  3. Department of Physiotherapy, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Bernabe Esteban-Moreno

  4. Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Enrique Herrera-Viedma

  5. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

    Manuel J. Cobo & Ignacio J. Pérez

Authors
  1. Jose A. Moral-Munoz
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  2. Bernabe Esteban-Moreno
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  3. Enrique Herrera-Viedma
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  4. Manuel J. Cobo
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Correspondence to Jose A. Moral-Munoz.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile & Wireless Health

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Moral-Munoz, J.A., Esteban-Moreno, B., Herrera-Viedma, E. et al. Smartphone Applications to Perform Body Balance Assessment: a Standardized Review. J Med Syst 42, 119 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-0970-1

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