Want to monitor your blood pressure and sugar level? Eat healthier meals? Screen yourself for depression? Find out if you need glasses? Now you can do it all with apps on your smartphone.
In fact, there are 40,000 medical applications available for download on smartphones and tablets � and the market is still in its infancy. But that growth is in the cross hairs of new regulatory efforts from the Food and Drug Administration.
Medical apps offer the opportunity to monitor health and encourage patient wellness on a moment-to-moment basis, instead of only during the occasional visit to the doctor's office. Some even replace devices used in hospitals and doctor's offices, such as glucometers and the high-quality microscopes used by dermatologists to examine skin irregularities.
"There's a lot of enthusiasm now for the ability to use design and to use consumer technology to help improve people's health at the ground level," says Andrew Rosenthal of Massive Health, a mobile health app company in San Francisco.
But so far, the market has been unregulated; for both doctors and patients. It is difficult to know which apps actually live up to their health claims or provide accurate information.
Last year, the FDA began to lay down the law. The agency released a first draft of guidelines that require mobile apps developers making medical claims to apply for FDA approval for those applications, the same way that new medical devices must be proved safe and effective before they can be sold. But that process can be both time-consuming and expensive.
.va{border:none !important;}Some app developers are bristling at the thought of a rigid regulatory structure, which they fear will stifle innovation in an industry known for rapid growth and flexibility.
"The FDA's current regulatory process was created when the floppy disk was around" � ancient history in the tech world, warns Joel White, executive director of the Health IT Now Coalition, which includes the computer chip maker Intel, pharmacy benefits manager Medco, Verizon, Aetna and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the FDA takes about six months to approve a medical device that is similar to an existing product and 20 months to approve a brand new device. That's simply too slow, White says.
Top Paid Medical Apps for iPhones (from the iTunes store)1. Pill Identifier ($0.99)
Developer: Drugs.com
Pill Identifier allows you to identify more than 10,000 different over-the-counter and prescription pills based on their appearance. Search by imprint, size, shape or color.
2. Pregnancy ++ ($2.99)
Developer: Health & Parenting Ltd.
Pregnancy ++ tracks the course of your pregnancy, including your weight, diet and exercise. It also includes HD fetal pictures, a kick counter and a contraction counter.
3. Baby Connect (Activity Logger) ($4.99)
Developer: Seacloud Software
Baby Connect tracks your baby�s everyday activities (including feeding, sleep, growth, health and vaccines) and creates graphical reports and trending charts. The information can be shared between parents, nannies and other child care providers.
4. Instant ECG: An Electrocardiogram Rhythms Interpretation Guide ($0.99)
Developer: iAnesthesia LLC
Instant ECG is an app for health care professionals, which teaches the basics of reading electrocardiograms (ECG). The app offers video demonstrations of 30 different arrhythmias to teach and then test a provider�s ability to diagnose irregularities.
5. MedCalc (medical calculator) ($0.99)
Developer: Mathias Tschopp and Pascal Pfiffner
MedCalc gives health care professionals access to more than 200 different diagnostic formulas, scores, scales and classifications that help measure a person�s health.
6. Pill Reminder by Drugs.com ($0.99)
Developer: Drugs.com
The Pill Reminder App keeps track of all of your medications, vitamins and supplements. Set up reminders to take your meds or refill a prescription, and check for drug interactions, dosage information and possible side effects.
7. Anatomy 3D: Organs ($1.99)
Developer: Real Bodywork
Anatomy 3D: Organs teaches users about structure and function of internal organs using 3D models, videos, audio lectures, diagrams, quizzes and a glossary.
8. Diagnosaurus DDx ($1.99)
Developer: Unbound Medicine, Inc.
Diagnosaurus DDX helps health care providers accurately diagnose patients quickly at the bedside. Providers can search over 1,000 differential diagnoses by organ system, symptom and disease, and use a special feature to consider alternative diagnoses when multiple conditions are possible.
9. Everyday First Aid ($0.99)
Developer: Portable Monster LLC
Everyday First Aid offers users information on how to handle an emergency. The medical information is based on guidelines from the American Red Cross and other health organization, and tells you how to handle situations including choking, wound cleaning, jellyfish stings, tick bites and heart attacks with illustrated training guides.
10. Drugs & Bugs ($5.99)
Developer: Haymarket Media
Drugs & Bugs is an app for medical students and health care professionals who care for patients with infectious diseases. It provides information on more than 100 antibiotics and nearly 200 bacterial pathogens, and allows providers to compare the effectiveness of various drugs.
"We're seeing mobile apps updated and created on a daily basis," he adds. "The life cycle is dramatically different."
It's also expensive: The cost of getting FDA approval for a standard medical device is about $24 million to $75 million, according to a Stanford University report.
The health app market currently is worth about $718 million and is expected to double by the end of the year, according to Research2Guidance, a global mobile research group.
Alain Labrique, who directs a global initiativeat Johns Hopkins University dedicated to mobile health technology, says that although the FDA guidelines could delay some tech development, they are an important consumer safeguard.
Labrique argues that many apps are "a lot of hype and very little evidence." While apps offer an exciting new opportunity in health care, "We also want to protect the public and be sure that medical claims are supported by data assessment and some comparison to a gold standard."
In particular, he warns that commercial interests and "the tendency to capitalize on the next big things" may lead app developers to overstate what their products can accomplish. "Making sure the public's best interests are met is not always the most expedient process."
The FDA expects to release final guidelines on mobile health apps this year, but some app developers aren't waiting. Many companies have started the formal application process, and the FDA has already approved a handful of apps.
White says that many app developers are not opposed to regulation, but they believe that the FDA process doesn't fit the industry. He suggested that the government set up a new regulatory framework for mobile health � something like the National Transportation Safety Board� to accommodate the speed, flexibility and innovation of this new marketplace.
Orrin Franko, 29, is part of a new breed of doctor-innovators in the mobile health industry. He's an orthopedic surgery resident at the University of California San Diego and runs a website called TopOrthoApps.com, where he reviews orthopedic apps for doctors and patients. He is also developing several of his own.
Recently, he invented a plastic attachment that works with an app that allows iPhones to measure the curve of the spine to test for scoliosis. It mimics a medical device called a Scioliometer, which is used in nearly every hospital across the country. The Scoliometer costs about $100 and was cleared by the FDA in 1983; the iPhone app costs 99 cents and Franko says his plastic attachment could be sold for about $10.
But he also knows that his device will have to be approved by the FDA, requiring a significant capital investment. He's planning to apply, he says, but with so many new apps coming on the market "there's no way the FDA is going to keep up."
Instead, he predicts, app developers with products that are not strictly medical, such as a healthy eating app, may avoid making medical claims in their marketing in order to skip the FDA process and will rely on good user reviews instead to generate publicity.
While the FDA sorts the process out with developers, Franko isn't wasting any time. In January, he helped launch the peer-reviewed Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine to help doctors make sense of the bonanza of medical apps.
Franko's goal is to make sure doctors and patients know what they're getting as quickly as possible. "These apps already exist," he says, "and people are using them in hospitals to make medical decisions, but no one knows if they're actually doing what they claim to be doing."
Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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