Fresh off the HX360 Inaugural Event during which two patient care startups won the Innovation Challenge, new research appearing in The BMJ, a British medical journal, questions whether consumer health apps provide any real health value to their main users – already-healthy consumers – and whether these apps could even cause harm by stoking unneeded anxiety in the “worried well.”
An excerpt from a summary of the research on The New York Times’ Well blog:
“Doctors don’t yet have definitive answers to these questions, partly because smartphone apps are so new and partly because government health authorities regulate consumer health apps at their own discretion, depending on the possible risks to users. As a result, many health and fitness apps lack rigorous clinical evidence to demonstrate they can actually improve health outcomes.”
Read the full article “Can healthy people benefit from health apps” in the BMJ here.
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