There’s an App for That? Highlighting the Difficulty in Finding Clinically Relevant Smartphone Applications

Abstract

IntroductionThe use of personal mobile devices in the medical field has grown quickly, and a large proportion of physicians use their mobile devices as an immediate resource for clinical decision-making, prescription information and other medical information. The iTunes App Store (Apple, Inc.) contains approximately 20,000 apps in its “Medical” category, providing a robust repository of resources for clinicians; however, this represents only 2% of the entire App Store. The App Store does not have strict criteria for identifying content specific to practicing physicians, making the identification of clinically relevant content difficult. The objective of this study is to quantify the characteristics of existing medical applications in the iTunes App Store that could be used by emergency physicians, residents, or medical students.MethodsWe found applications related to emergency medicine (EM) by searching the iTunes App Store for 21 terms representing core content areas of EM, such as “emergency medicine,” “critical care,” “orthopedics,” and “procedures.” Two physicians independently reviewed descriptions of these applications in the App Store and categorized each as the following: Clinically Relevant, Book/Published Source, Non-English, Study Tools, or Not Relevant. A third physician reviewer resolved disagreements about categorization. Descriptive statistics were calculated.ResultsWe found a total of 7,699 apps from the 21 search terms, of which 17.8% were clinical, 9.6% were based on a book or published source, 1.6% were non-English, 0.7% were clinically relevant patient education resources, and 4.8% were study tools. Most significantly, 64.9% were considered not relevant to medical professionals. Clinically relevant apps make up approximately 6.9% of the App Store’s “Medical” Category and 0.1% of the overall App Store.ConclusionClinically relevant apps represent only a small percentage (6.9%) of the total App volume within the Medical section of the App Store. Without a structured search-and-evaluation strategy, it may be difficult for the casual user to identify this potentially useful content. Given the increasing adoption of devices in healthcare, national EM associations should consider curating these resources for their members.

Improved aftercare in LVAD patients: Development and feasibility of a smartphone application as a first step for telemonitoring

“…Numerous medical applications already exist, for example, in the field of chronic disease management . Clinical use of well‐designed smartphone applications can provide a considerable added value for both patients and medical staff . Thanks to the enormous computing capacity of modern devices, as well as the additional possibility of internet storage (Cloud), clinical decision‐making tools have now become reality …”

“…12 Clinical use of well-designed smartphone applications can provide a considerable added value for both patients 16 and medical staff. 10 Thanks to the enormous computing capacity of modern devices, as well as the additional possibility of internet storage (Cloud), clinical decision-making tools have now become reality. 10 However, in the field of LVAD therapy, no smartphone applications have been implemented in the routine aftercare of patients to date, and only very few pilot studies have been conducted, with very small patient groups.…”

“…10 Thanks to the enormous computing capacity of modern devices, as well as the additional possibility of internet storage (Cloud), clinical decision-making tools have now become reality. 10 However, in the field of LVAD therapy, no smartphone applications have been implemented in the routine aftercare of patients to date, and only very few pilot studies have been conducted, with very small patient groups. 13,17,18 Within the framework of our study, a total of 13 patients gave very positive feedback after using a smartphone application for LVAD aftercare.…”

“…7 A conceivable first and simple step in this direction could be a smartphone application. Smartphone applications are now used in all kinds of different areas (also medical), [9][10][11][12] and it may be assumed that this development will continue in the future.…”

Return to the planet of the apps

“…It remains difficult for an individual clinician to identify which medical apps are relevant among the morass of available software. For example, Wiechmann and colleagues searched for available apps that would be useful to Emergency Medicine clinicians . The authors reported that the iTunes App Store contains approximately 20 000 apps in its “Medical” category, representing 2% of the entire App Store.…”