Mobile Apps for Foot Measurement in Pedorthic Practice : Scoping Review
“ The advancement and accessibility of mobile app technology in recent years have enabled efforts to translate the same traditional clinical treatments and intervention programs in the development and growth of the use of foot health mobile apps .”
specific criteria of foot properties and the criteria of software quality characteristics , along with the viability of these apps for use as professional tools for foot measurement by pedorthists , podiatrists , orthotists , and individual users . We also investigated the potential of these apps to increase awareness of foot health and foot-related problems .
Methods
App Search Procedure
This review included apps found in the official mobile app stores : Apple App Store and Google Play Store . An electronic search was performed between July and August 2020 in the two app stores for iOS and Android mobile devices , respectively . The search process did not consider any subcategories to which the apps belonged in the app stores . The following terms were used to search for foot measurement apps across the app stores : “ foot scanner ,” “ foot app medical ,” “ foot measure ,” “ feet ,” “ measure foot ,” and “ foot length .” Region-restricted apps were not considered . The methodology used in this study for the identification , screening , and selection of the apps ’ matching criteria is displayed in Figure 1 .
A secondary search was performed to identify apps that were intended to be used with advanced imaging sensors or other hardware requirements using the following keywords : “ foot size ,” “ shoe size ,” “ 3D foot ,” and “ foot scan solutions .” The results of this latter search were not limited by language , app store description , or rating . No restrictions were imposed in both searches across the different app stores . The search results obtained using the enlisted terms varied significantly between the app stores . As a result , the exact search using the same terms was performed multiple times across different devices to minimize the variance of app indexing and to construct the final inclusion list of foot measurement apps .
The investigation , screening , and extraction phases of the app search and selection processes were performed by the
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