Mobile apps have become a convenient way to provide health information and communication services directly in the hands of clinicians and consumers. Apps can be used to support consumers in a variety of health tasks to manage chronic diseases, support lifestyle changes and in self-diagnosis. For clinicians, they can improve access to patient information and clinical decision support tools at the point-of-care. While the use of apps in healthcare can bring many benefits, poor quality information and gaps in software functionality can pose new risks to patient safety.
Mobile apps have become a convenient way to provide health information and communication services directly in the hands of clinicians and consumers. Apps can be used to support consumers in a variety of health tasks to manage chronic diseases, support lifestyle changes and in self-diagnosis. For clinicians, they can improve access to patient information and clinical decision support tools at the point-of-care. While the use of apps in healthcare can bring many benefits, poor quality information and gaps in software functionality can pose new risks to patient safety.
Health apps are perhaps the most extreme example of challenges for clinical governance in the digital health ecosystem. While current efforts are usefully directed at curating the growing numbers of apps,20 they are not sustainable. A parallel strategy could focus on the preceding stages of the IT system life cycle to stem the growing tide of apps, by controlling their design, build and distribution. As with any other digital technology, we need to consider apps from a problem-driven perspective by the health information or communication service they support.
Our key conclusion is that the area of health apps is immature; this is unsurprising as apps are a radical and new development, which relies on sophisticated technology that has a record of frequent innovation. Patients, clinicians, developers and regulators are inevitably beholden to this current immaturity. Unlike established healthcare fields (eg, pharmaceuticals, radiotherapy, anaesthetics, etc) there is—as yet—no professional foundation, such as requiring certified and registered developers.