Choosing Effective, Sticky Health Apps (Part 2)

In a blog post last week, I shared an excerpt from the new book that Paul Cerrato and I just completed,The Transformative Power of Mobile Medicine. Here is a second excerpt from Chapter 3,  “Exploring the Strengths and Weaknesses of Mobile Health Apps.”Even patients who are fully engaged in their own care still need access to medical apps they can trust. The IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science has performed a detailed analysis of the clinical evidence supporting mobile health apps, rating their maturity and relative quality. Its rating scale places a single observational study near the bottom of the scale, progressing upwards through multiple observational studies, a single randomized controlled trial, multiple RCTs, a single meta-analysis, and several meta-analyses. Using this methodology, it organized mobile apps into several categories. In the category called “Potential disappointments—more study required” are apps for exercise, pain management, dermatology, autism, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, and autism. In the category called “Candidates for [clinical] Adoption” were mobile apps for weight management, asthma, COPD, congestive heart failure, stroke, arthritis, cancer, PTSD, insomnia, smoking cessation, stress management, cardiac rehabilitation, and hypertension. The most important category listed in the IQVIA analysis , which it considered candidates for inclusion in clinical guidelines, were diabetes, depression, and anxiety.IQVIA h...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs