Doctors reviewed 137 of the most highly rated or commonly
recommended apps available for Apple’s iPhone and handsets running
Google’s Android software that target people with high health costs
or substantial medical needs. Often, though, the doctors gave these
popular apps poor marks.
“I think that the lack of correlation between consumer app store and
doctors' ratings is likely due to competing priorities between the
two groups,” said lead study author Dr. Karandeep Singh of the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“Consumers may place a different value than physicians on the
accuracy of medical information, availability of certain
functionalities, and design considerations,” Singh added by email.
“For example, an app that enables accurate entry of blood pressure
with appropriate indications for high and low blood pressures may be
viewed positively by a physician, and if that app requires a login
every time it is started, a consumer may feel it is too burdensome
to use and rate it poorly,” Singh said.
Approximately half of all Americans are living with at least one
chronic medical problem such as heart disease, diabetes or asthma,
researchers note in the journal Health Affairs, online December 5th.
For the current study, researchers evaluated apps targeted at people
who live with asthma, arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure,
depression, lung disease, liver disease, kidney disease, heart
failure or addiction to drugs, alcohol or tobacco. They also looked
at apps for people who have survived a stroke, battled cancer, been
diagnosed with memory loss or dementia, are obese or are living with
pain.
Many of the more than 165,000 health apps available aim to help
people track their condition day-to-day, stay on track with
medication or at-home testing, share information electronically with
their care teams and get education and encouragement between doctor
appointments.
Nearly all the apps in the study let people enter information into
their phone about their health that day, such as a daily blood sugar
or blood pressure level or whether they were feeling suicidal.
But only 28 of these apps reacted appropriately when the reviewers
entered a dangerous value – a blood pressure that was sky-high, a
super-low blood sugar level or a suicidal mood, for instance.
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Even though many apps offered tracking functions, education,
reminders and alerts that could be useful in theory to people with
chronic illnesses, few of the apps provided tailored guidance on
specific actions users should take, the study found.
While apps have the potential to help with health, consumers should
still be wary, said Sarah Blenner, a public health researcher at the
University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the
study.
“It’s concerning, though not surprising, that the study found that
so few apps replied appropriately to problematic information entered
into a health app,” Blenner said by email. “Many applications lack
sufficient and thorough testing for accuracy, exposing consumers to
significant risks.”
Patients may benefit from using apps to track things like diet or
exercise, but they should avoid apps to measure things like blood
pressure unless advised to do this by a doctor, said Dr. Nilay Kumar
of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
in Madison.
“Mobile-health has an enormous potential to revolutionize self-care
for chronic medical conditions,” Kumar, who wasn’t involved in the
study, said by email. “But as shown in the current and previous
studies, there are many remaining safety concerns underscoring the
need for healthcare providers to remain vigilant about what
mobile-health tools their patients may be using.”
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