Mobile health and neurocognitive domains evaluation through smartphones: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) have significantly advanced evaluating neurocognitive functions; but, few reports have documented whether they validate neurocognitive impairments as well as paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests.

Objective: To meta-analyze the correlation between mobile applications for neuropsychological tests and validated paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests for evaluating neurocognitive impairments.

Method: We used PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, Web of Science, and IEEE Explorer through January 2020 to identify studies that compared mobile applications for neuropsychological tests vs. paper-and-pencil neurophysiological tests. We used random-effects models via the DerSimonian and Laird method to extract pooled Pearson's correlation coefficients and we stratified by study design.

Result: Nine out of 4639 screened articles (one RCT and eight prospective longitudinal case series) were included. For the observational studies, there was a statistically significant strong and direct correlation between mobile applications for neuropsychological test scores and validated paper-and-pencil neuropsychological assessment scores (r = 0.70; 95% CI 0.59, 0.79; I² = 74.5%; p- heterogeneity <0.001). Stronger results were seen for the RCT (r = 0.92; 95% CI 0.77, 0.97).

Conclusion: This meta-analysis showed a statistically significant correlation between mobile applications and the validated paper-and-pencil neuropsychological assessments analyzed for the evaluation of neurocognitive impairments.

Keywords: App/Application; Neurocognition/Cognition; Neurocognitive domain; Neurocognitive evaluation; Smart device; Smartphone.