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| Health & Wellness App: Screenshot from <30 Days iPhone app by Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada |
Apps have grown in popularity over the last few years; in fact, Apple’s App Store has over a million apps with many focusing on healthcare. Suffice to say, apps are becoming very important to consumers in North America. I see apps as being in two categories: the first category is wellness, for example apps that deal with smoking cessation, weight loss, healthy eating choices, lifestyle issues for hypertension, etc. These apps can be useful as coaching aids for people to self-manage. The second category is apps that assist healthcare providers manage a patient, for example apps that remind people to take their medication, or record their blood sugars and relate that back to lifestyle. The latter set of apps can provide information over time that a healthcare provider would find useful in reviewing, and could help them to understand some of the issues that a patient might be experiencing with managing their chronic disease.
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| HCP-Patient App: Screenshot from Wellx iPhone app by Healthcare Made Simple |
In the future, OTN will likely explore the possibility of the second category of apps as a way to support healthcare providers. For example, much like one receives a prescription for a pill, one might receive a prescription for an app to use for a period of time. I would envision our role to evaluate whether an app will do what it says it’s supposed to do, that it meets privacy standards, that it’s clinically relevant, that it has an appropriate user interface, etc. This may look something like a suite of OTN-approved apps that providers will know to be relevant and they can direct their patients in using those apps.
For additional peer-reviewed journal articles on mobile apps, visit the mHealth, Home Monitoring, and Mobile Devices category in our publication repository.
