Guidelines for reporting of health interventions using mobile phones: mobile health (mHealth) evidence reporting and assessment (mERA) checklist

Smisha Agarwal, Amnesty E LeFevre, Jaime Lee, Kelly L’Engle, Garrett Mehl,
Chaitali Sinha, Alain Labrique for the WHO mHealth Technical Evidence Review Group.

Abstract:

To improve the completeness of reporting of mobile health (mHealth)interventions, the WHO mHealth Technical Evidence Review Group developed the mHealth evidence reporting and assessment (mERA) checklist. The development process for mERA consisted of convening an expert
group to recommend an appropriate approach, convening a global expert review panel for checklist development, and pilot testing the checklist. The guiding principle for the development
of these criteria was to identify a minimum set of information needed to define what the mHealth intervention is (content), where it is being implemented (context), and how it was implemented (technical features), to support replication of the intervention. This paper presents the resulting 16
item checklist and a detailed explanation and elaboration for each item, with illustrative reporting
examples. Through widespread adoption, we expect that the use of these guidelines will standardise the quality of mHealth evidence reporting, and indirectly improve the quality of mHealth evidence.