Healthcare systems around the world are entering a new era in which digital healthcare applications are increasingly becoming part of standard medical care. Whereas medications must undergo a strict regulated process of testing before they are approved and eventually reimbursed, a similar process for digital health apps has only recently started to emerge. Some countries are pushing ahead now...
Consumer-facing health apps are increasingly prevalent, but they’re anything but infallible. According to a recent literature review of published app safety investigations, these offerings have been shown to include issues ranging from poor content or information to faulty functionality.
“Health apps may have significant potential to improve population health,” the study’s authors wrote. “However...
Chicago-based higi, a digital health company that powers health kiosks in thousands of retail locations in the US, acquired New York and Seattle-based challenges and rewards platform Earndit last month. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Higi is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Michael Ferro, who is also the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times. The company officially...
A breakdown of the apps for specific therapy areas.
There are more than 43,000 healthcare apps available from the US iTunes store, but only about 16,275 of those are patient-facing apps with "genuine" health content, according to a new study from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. Furthermore, in an analysis of the Google Play Store, IMS found that 50 percent of health apps are...
For many years there has been a common refrain for mobile health app discovery: There's no Consumer Reports for health apps. With tens of thousands of health-related smartphone apps, dozens of direct-to-consumer wearable health sensors now available, and various other websites and services -- how is the increasingly health-conscious consumer to choose? Or, perhaps, if you believe that digital...
If WebMD has its way, in a few years time it will be clear that one of the biggest announcements to come out of HIMSS 2013 was its partnership with Qualcomm Life. In an interview with MobiHealthNews, WebMD's EVP & CTO Bill Pence explained that the initial partnership sees WebMD's consumer sites and apps serving as a place to collect data from the health devices and services that connect to...
According to a new research report from London-based Global Data, the global mobile health market was worth $1.2 billion in 2011 and will increase in value to $11.8 billion by 2018. The research firm stated this past April that the mobile health market was worth about $500,000 in 2010 and -- curiously -- would be worth only $8 billion by 2018 when it released its report this past spring. Citing...
This week a new San Francisco-based startup, Mango Health, which is developing a medication adherence app with social gaming elements, announced that it had scooped up $1.45 million in venture funding. Investors include Floodgate Fund, First Round Capital, Steve Anderson with Baseline Ventures, Zynga co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus and Square COO Keith Rabois, according to GigaOM.
A handful of...
Janssen Healthcare Innovation, an entrepreneurial unit of pharmaceutical heavyweight Johnson & Johnson, is promoting medication adherence with a new secure messaging platform and smartphone app and website.
The Care4Today Mobile Adherence program, announced on Wednesday, delivers reminders to take medications as directed, refill prescriptions and visit physicians when appropriate. Users can...
Of the more than 13,600 consumer heath apps we analyzed in April, the vast majority fit snugly into one of our 12 main subcategories, which include cardio fitness, dieting, stress relief, chronic condition management, and medication adherence. Since we began tracking consumer health apps in early 2010 we have noticed a handful of emerging categories of apps that are only now becoming large enough...
