More than a million health and wellness apps are available in the Apple and Google app stores. More are added every day. With so many health related apps, how can you decide which ones to use and how they can improve your health?
First, think about what type of app you are looking for. Overall, you can divide health-related apps into four broad categories: general health and wellness apps, apps to manage your general health or a specific chronic condition, telemedicine and telemedicine apps, and the newest category, digital therapeutics apps FDA approved for Can be used to treat certain medical conditions.
“Our daily behavior increases most of our risk of illness and the associated costs,” says Dr. Daniel Kraft, founder and chairman of Exponential Medicine, a program that studies the evolution of technologies and their potential in medicine and healthcare. “And we now have an explosion of new tools that we can use to measure and improve our healthy behavior. The first Fitbit wasn’t launched until 2009. Wearables have become ubiquitous and can measure almost every aspect of our activity, physiology, and even mental health. “
Health and wellness apps
The numerous general health and wellness apps include nutrition apps like LoseIt and MyFitnessPal, which you can use to track your eating and exercise habits and lose weight, fitness apps like Strava, Fitplan and Aaptiv, sleep trackers like Sleep Cycle and Mental wellbeing apps like Calm, Headspace and Happify.
“Because wearables are widely used by most people, many wellness apps like this one can communicate with your wearables,” says Dr. Rafael Grossman, a surgeon at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in New Hampshire who performed the first Google Glass operation. “And data from these third-party apps can be seamlessly consolidated into your Apple Health Kit or Google Fit to give you a complete report of your health and activity in one place.”
Health management apps
These apps usually offer general health management tools like medication trackers and reminders, as well as disease-specific features like measuring blood glucose for people with diabetes or reporting bleeding events for people with hemophilia. Many of these apps can also be set up to share information directly with your doctor.
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If you’re looking for an app that can help you treat a specific chronic condition, the first thing to do is ask the doctor treating you for that condition. Another good source of recommendations would be national organizations advocating for people with your condition. For example, My MS Manager is a free mobile phone application created by the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (MSAA) that allows users to track their MS symptoms, generate reports for healthcare professionals, and get medication reminders.
If you are cared for in a large hospital or medical center, they may have one or more apps of their own that you can use to manage your visits, prescriptions, and electronic health records. Many health insurers also offer apps for patients enrolled on one of their plans that allow them to manage their health benefits with a few taps of the finger, and even offer incentives for healthy behavior by offering rewards like gift cards.
Many of these apps can also be integrated with wearable technologies like Fitbit or Apple Watch, or other digital health devices for the home like blood pressure cuffs, smart thermometers, and smart scales. “Apps are now mingling with home diagnostic platforms,” says Kraft. “In part because of the need to make more remote health care visits during COVID, people have become more comfortable using things like attached blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters. The great value is in helping you intelligently manage disease processes, especially chronic ones. “
Telehealth and telemedicine apps
Apps like Doctor on Demand, Teladoc, GoodRx Care, Talkspace and Zocdoc can connect you directly to a doctor for a virtual appointment or help you find and book local healthcare providers for personal visits. More and more hospitals and health systems such as the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic are also offering the option of participating in virtual visits in their own apps.
“The pandemic has accelerated the use of virtual visits dramatically, and I don’t think we will ever return to pre-pandemic levels of personal health visits as patients and doctors discover the compelling convenience and effectiveness. Force says. “Even before Virtual Zoom or FaceTime with doctors, we had ever smarter chatbots that could effectively identify symptoms and triage problems using apps like these at a lower cost.”
Digital Therapeutics Apps
In 2017, the FDA approved the first in a spate of new digital therapeutics to treat disease, a program called reSET by Pear Therapeutics, which uses mobile reviews and interventions to treat substance use disorders. So far, more than 200 others have followed, including BlueStar, a personalized coaching app that lowers blood sugar levels in adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, and Kaia Health, a physical therapy app that has been shown in clinical trials significant reductions in pain, anxiety, stress, and depression in people with musculoskeletal pain.
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“We are now at a time when hardware and software have developed into an ecosystem with apps, smartphones, wearables and AI algorithms,” says Grossmann. “This gives us better answers and more individualized recommendations for behavior changes that make sense from a medical point of view and can lead to real improvements in health.”
Kraft predicts that your doctor may soon be prescribing an app instead of, or in addition to, a new drug or other type of treatment. “It’s a golden age for these digital solutions,” he says. “There are so many ways to optimize your physical and mental wellbeing, find diseases before they become significant, or treat complex diseases that range from pneumonia to cancer.”
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