Trust and Evidence in an Online Community of Speech and Language Therapists: The Case of iPad Use

Mobile touch-screen devices are increasingly being used as part of the daily practices of health practitioners [1,12]. This is particularly so for Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs). There is a wide variety of apps available for use as therapy tools, although there is a scarcity of research examining their efficacy. As a result there has been a growth of online content, namely blogs, where SLTs share their knowledge and experience of using apps as therapy tools, compiling their own resources. We analysed the content of these blogs using a grounded theory approach to gain insights into SLTs' appropriation of both apps and blogs. Our findings indicate tensions surrounding the use of these technologies—tensions that are pervasive across other health care professions and contexts—and develop recommendations to ameliorate these tensions in the design of future apps.