Abstract
Background Existing educational mobile health applications (MHAs) on oral cancer are not very effective due
to the features they possessed. To create an educational MHA on oral cancer with superior features, this study
explored MHA creators (digital communication experts) and persons at risk of oral cancer (potential end-users of educational
MHA on oral cancer) on their understanding of oral cancer, their uptake of educational MHAs on oral cancer,
and how a good MHA on oral cancer should look like.
Methods This qualitative study involved four online focus group discussions among seventeen digital communication
experts, sexually active persons, and tobacco/alcohol users, who were recruited from five countries through volunteer
sampling technique. Collected data was thematically analysed.
Results Some participants had misconceptions on oral cancer. Although, majority of them opined that MHA will
be useful in improving literacy on oral cancer, but none of them had ever used an educational MHA on oral cancer
before. Features such as having oral health tips, ability to geospatially locate dental surgeries, streak functions, userfriendliness,
basic operability, inclusivity, absence of advertisements, auto-notification functions, ability to operate
offline, online, and at a high speed, ability to have a personal tracker, informative content on oral cancer in diverse formats
(e.g. texts, infographics, and videos), and operability in multiple languages were identified as the most important
features such MHA should have.
Conclusion The findings generated from this qualitative study identified educational MHA to be a useful tool
for improving literacy on oral cancer. Also, the study findings have provided insightful ideas needed for the creation