Mobile Healthcare Apps: Good or Bad?

Healthcare Mobile Apps – there are certainly no shortage of them, and they cover just about every area of health care you can think of, including mobile blood pressure measurement. According to a recent online article published by Medical News Today, more than 500 million smartphone users worldwide will be using a health app within the next year. And the FDA has certainly taken notice of this growing trend, recently clarifying that only a very specific group of health apps are actually validated in accordance with their guidelines and regulated under their governance.

This same article - “Health apps: do they do more harm than good?” - references several studies that evaluated the effectiveness of certain popular health apps with some concerning results. Red flags included apps being developed with no medical input as well as those simply making false claims. So, does that mean healthcare apps don’t have a place in this arena?

Actually, the prevailing opinion of many is that healthcare apps validated and approved by the appropriate regulatory body may just transform the medical world for both patients and healthcare providers in the coming years. And this is likely to come in the form of remote data access and portals allowing patients to provide real-time information to physicians. But does the good also come with the bad? Could this potentially inundate providers with excessive information, thus ultimately running the risk of creating more challenges?

What are your thoughts? We’d like to hear from you.