How to choose a good healthcare app
This article first appeared in the May 2013 edition of Pulse+IT Magazine.
With thousands of medical apps to choose from for your mobile, it’s very easy to get lost browsing the app stores. But really, we have to choose, because apps offer an easy way to improve healthcare and health education. If we don’t use them, we’re missing out on an exciting new movement in medicine.
So what makes a good healthcare app? I have asked myself this many times as I developed my own apps and reviewed many more. Deciding whether an app is good or not is nearly impossible to do before you buy it, but reading app reviews and word of mouth from colleagues can be a pretty reliable way of helping you pick. Generally when I look at an app or develop one, I consider a few main areas that make apps great: content, design, price, and added value.
To state the obvious, without the content being useful to you, the app is worthless. The quality of the content is important, so looking at who the authors/developers are will give you an idea of their clinical expertise. Although the concept of healthcare apps receiving a special seal of approval is starting to emerge, most apps don’t have this. As with any time you browse for healthcare information on the internet, you need to consider the reliability of the source.
It’s also important to have a think about whether you will actually use the app – the content might seem fun, but will that just be as a one-off and then languish in a folder on your mobile for all eternity? If you’re paying for an app you should find it useful regularly.
And do you have the content in another app already? As my list of medical apps on my phone has grown, I have started to realise that many apps are overlapping in content. I have at least six apps that calculate fluid requirements in children. In actual fact, there’s only one that I use regularly, so rationalising your apps is a good idea to avoid phone overload.
Author Details
Dr Tessa Davis BSc(Hons), MBChB, MA, MRCPCH This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tessa Davis is a paediatric emergency trainee at Sydney Children's Hospital. She has an interest in health innovation, patient safety and IT. Tessa created GuidelinesForMe, an online, crowd-sourced database of clinical guidelines; learnmed, a not-for-profit social enterprise; and iClinicalApps, a mobile app development company. She also regularly reviews apps for medical blog Life in the Fast Lane.Posted in Australian eHealth
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Comments
It is actually quite touching in parts and well worth a look.
You can find it at http://www.apple.com/ios/videos/
There is very little doubt that these information/kno wledge resource systems offer great potential in facilitating clinicians and patient decision making a significant degree of caution needs to enlisted regarding these technologies.
Recent reviews in the imedicalapps web site:
http://www.imedicalapps.com/app-review/
The reviewers on this site point out two important features related to their use.
1. One is the validity of the data and knowledge provided by them. As the web site review noted. “While beneficial in demonstrating the number of apps available, the results are leading to some troubling revelations about the information available for medical purposes. Namely, there is a shortage of apps that are scientifically backed or demonstrate some form of development with clinicians.”
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2013/05/study-cancer-apps-clinical-evidence/
2. The second point is one of further information overload and the dissociation of data and information from other data resources within the patient care system. [See Mosa AS, Yoo I, Sheets L. A systematic review of healthcare applications for smartphones. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2012;12:67.]
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2013/05/study-mobile-medical-app-overload/
3. A final point to be made is there is some evidence that there is a significant drop off in use of Medical Apps over time suggesting that their use follows the Gartner Hype Cycle related to the introduction of new technologies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
Many of these apps are a minefield of potential misinformation.