Most health apps fail
According to the 2021 Digital Health Trends report by IQVIA, 83% of apps are installed less than 5,000 times and make up only 1% of total downloads.
Of apps that were removed from the app stores, 51% has less than 100 downloads.
Why do health apps fail?
As neatly summarised by Torous et al, it’s not the functionality but other factors such as the inability for users to customise, unclear benefits (and evidence of), concerns around data privacy, not being easy to use and lack of actionable insights.
They offer the example of mindLAMP – as an example of an open-source single platform -that addresses some of these issues and allows others to develop a solution further.
What do I mean by an ecosystem?
Building on what Torous et al describe:
- There is some level of collaboration with elements of the overall solution being provided by different suppliers
- Access to the data does not need to be obtained from ‘scratch’ or the ‘original’ source by each of the suppliers. Solutions such as the recently announced Google Healthcare Data Engine can help standardise and flow data (where access is available)
- A common architecture underlies the solution overseeing data privacy and sharing, and providing performance data (i.e. how solutions impact health outcomes)
How could it help?
Ecosystems can help drive adoption and the success of the (right) digital health solutions by:
- Removing the burden (with appropriate controls and permissions) of suppliers finding and flowing the data they need so that they can focus on developing the solution and how it engages with citizens, healthcare professionals and administrators
- Performance data enables validation and building up of evidence needed for solutions, and for funders to focus on solutions that actually work (outcomes based payments anyone?)
- Provides an opportunity to develop and implement incentive frameworks – i.e. for ‘data providers’, ‘data cleansers’ and ‘data contributors’ (with the right controls and transparency on how it is used, and benefits them and others, I believe users will be willing to contribute their own data). It will be interesting to how projects such as Solid – which lets users store their data securely in Pods – encourages users to share their data
Very happy to hear your comments below or feel free to email me to share ideas – janak@usehealthdata.com
References
Torous, J. and Vaidyam, A., 2020. Multiple uses of app instead of using multiple apps–a case for rethinking the digital health technology toolbox. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 29.