By Brian Dolan and Chris Gullo
In a watershed moment, the FTC this week fined two app developers who falsely advertised that their smartphone apps could treat acne. The apps, AcneApp and Acne Pwner, were sold in the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace, respectively. The settlements ban the developers from stating certain health-related claims without scientific evidence. AcneApp’s developer has to pay the FTC $14,294 and the developer of Acne Pwnder must pay $1,700.
AcneApp may have been removed from Apple’s AppStore as long ago as March 15, 2011 according to FTC documents. Acne Pwner may have left the Android Market last year.
“Smartphones make our lives easier in countless ways, but unfortunately when it comes to curing acne, there’s no app for that,” stated FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in a press release.
“It’s surprising that FTC took this action, because it would have been more natural for FDA,” Bradley Merrill Thompson, the co-founder of the mHealth Regulatory Coalition told MobiHealthNews in an email. “I have had no knowledge beyond what I’ve read in the FTC press release, so I don’t know the company side of the story, but it would appear that the app would fall squarely into FDA regulation. Under the draft FDA guidance released in July, this would be an app that would transform a cell phone into a medical device, and thus fall within FDA’s jurisdiction.”
FDA’s draft guidelines actually specifically point to “apps that use the light source from a mobile platform to cure and treat specific conditions, such as acne” as one type of app that would be considered a medical device and subject to regulation under the proposed guidelines.
Both of the apps claimed that colored lights emitted from smartphones would reduce acne if held up daily to the user’s skin. According to the FTC, Acne Pwner was downloaded approximately 3,300 times from the Android store at a $0.99 pricepoint, while AcneApp secured approximately 11,600 downloads from the iTunes store at $1.99.
Shortly after its release in September 2009, AcneApp received press from The New York Times (December 2009) as well as Fox News (January 2010). Dr. Gregory Pearson told the NY Times that “this would have to go through a lot more clinical study before I could quantify its efficacy.” In the Fox news segment, Dr. Pearson said he couldn’t claim that the app offered any specific medical benefits: “I really can’t because those studies have to be done. But the idea, I didn’t just come up with it. It’s really based on some science.”
That “science”, according to the FTC, supposedly comes from a study in the British Journal of Dermatology that AcneApp falsely claimed proves that blue and red light therapy is an effective acne treatment. A dermatologist in the NY Times in the December 2009 article expressed skepticism as well: “In studies we’ve done, data has shown that both blue and red light have a low efficacy range in acne treatment,” Dr. Alexiades-Armenakas told them. “But it took dozens, and I mean dozens — 88 treatments — of the therapy, before we could see any results.”
According to MobiHealthNews’ AppStore archive, AcneApp’s description in the Apple Appstore as of February 2010 included a reference to plans for a clinical study of the app’s efficacy: “Baylor College of Medicine is gearing up for the first ever clinical trial of a phone based application, AcneApp. The Baylor study is independent,” the description read. “This is a really big deal,” it continued.
Last February Kathleen Doheny of WebMDNews asked Baylor College of Medicine if any such study was planned or underway, but a spokesperson from the school told the publication that they couldn’t find anyone employed there who had such plans. This past March when the app was removed from the AppStore its description made no mention of the supposedly planned Baylor study.
By our count there were five other apps that offered similar acne treatment to Acne Away back in February 2010. Four of those apps are no longer available for download: Anti-Aging ($2.99) by United Holdings Group, Acne Clear ($0.99) by United Holdings Group, ($0.99) Skin Cleanser by United Holdings Group, and ($4.99) Dr. Acne by Diomedics. Diomedics’ Dr. Acne was the first app to use light treatment on acne since it launched in February 2009, about seven months before AcneApp.
Interestingly, LOL Software’s Acne Away ($0.99) app, which launched in January 2010, is still available for download. Back in February 2010 Acne Away’s description cited the same BJD study as AcneApp to back up its efficacy. The current description for Acne Away’s iPad app claims that the larger screen of the device makes for a 113 percent more effective “in fighting acne in most people.”
Including Acne Away there are currently five apps offering light treatments for acne in Apple’s Appstore: M&R Selected’s SkinApp (free), FunVid’s Acne Light Waves ($1.99), Luke Campbell’s Light Therapy ($1.99), and LightRx’s ZITzapp ($0.99).
Check out a slideshow of screenshots and descriptions of these currently available apps here.
Read the full press release from the FTC below. Keep reading>>
This week the Federal Trade Commission made an unprecedented move to remove two medical apps from the Apple AppStore and Android Market on grounds that they made unsubstantiated efficacy claims. The apps both offered “light therapy” to treat a user’s acne. Both developers were ordered to pay back the monies they made by selling the apps to consumers.
iHealth told MobiHealthNews this week that it plans to launch two new products, the iHealth Digital Scale and iBaby Monitor. A separate company called iBaby, a partner of iHealth’s, created the baby monitoring device.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that NantWorks is the name of the company that he has been building through a series of acquisitions over the past few years. Following the sales of two companies Soon-Shiong founded — American Pharmaceutical Partners (sold 2008) and Abraxis BioScience (sold 2010) — he has invested more than $400 million dollars in acquisitions, according to a NantWorks press release.
Qualcomm has partnered with Life Care Networks and the Community Health Association of China to launch a mobile health project in underserved communities in China to provide prevention services and care services for cardiovascular diseases. The project, which is part of Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative, will make use of China Telecom’s 3G network.
By many accounts BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is on the ropes.