Do health app directories support or stifle innovations in health apps?

There are over 13,000 health apps available to smartphones at the moment. The quality of the apps and the information contained within them vary wildly as developers with different motives and ability look to use the smartphone’s app paradigm to improve the user’s health or to make some easy money. The app markets also cater for international markets; developers can choose which countries they’d like to sell their app in (and can produce localised versions if they wish) but there is no quality check to ensure that the apps are localised meaning that some of the apps in the UK app stores are actually American.

When a developer submits their app to the app store it is checked over to ensure it runs and meets a number of app store criteria. Of the app stores Blackberry and Apple are the most demanding but they only check to ensure that the app works to a certain standard, won’t comprise the device and are provide enough functionality to be considered an app. The Google Play Market are less demanding and in general apps submitted to it will be live within a few hours compared to the week or longer wait of Apple’s app store.

By offering users a single point of contact for UK clinically reviewed apps the user doesn’t run the risk of downloading an app that isn’t going to meet the standards of NHS patient information. This helps to create some equilibrium in the otherwise turbulent app market environment where apps are judged by the number of times downloaded and not the overall quality of the app and the information it contains. For clinicians the Health Apps Library will serve as a clear index of apps suitable for patients to use on their devices and will allow them to suggest apps knowing that the app has met the high standards expected of NHS backed products. This will help with the information prescriptions initiative and ultimately increase the amount of clinically validated information available to a patient.