Identifying Reusable Core Assets of Digital Health Apps

Despite their variability, Digital Health Apps (DHAs) typically share functionalities (i.e. core assets) and can thus be considered as a family of similar products with unique features adapted to specific use cases.
Objective:
We aim to identify and model reusable core assets to facilitate the development of a number of similar, but adapted DHAs in the context of an initial product line engineering approach.
Methods:
To identify core assets, we apply a systematic analysis of six exemplary state-of-the-art DHAs. In an iterative process, they were modeled in a feature model.
Results:
We identified 14 core assets of DHAs out of which six are mandatory (i.e. required by each DHA) and eight are optional core assets (i.e. required by most DHAs, depending on the app complexity).
Conclusions:
We found that DHAs share common functionalities that could contribute to a more efficient development of the DHA, especially in terms of time and cost savings.