The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics has released a 63-page white paper on the state of mHealth with a focus on the US. This in-depth review of the industry includes IMS' AppScript score and highlights some top apps as well as a review of ongoing studies and clinical trials.
App Market Growth
There has been 106% growth in iOS health apps since 2013 with a breakdown of:
- 65% of apps are Wellness Management
- 24% of apps are Disease & Treatment Management
- 11% other
Image modified from IMS report
Disease-specific apps in 2015 are concentrated on these condition types:
- 29% mental health
- 15% diabetes
- 8% blood & circulatory
- 7% musculoskeletal
- 6% nervous system
App / Device Integrations
IMS found that 10% of apps can connect to one or more devices with the vast majority of these devices being fitness trackers. The wearable location of these devices are all around the body:
Image modified from IMS report
mHealth Evidence
IMS reviewed 580 studies and scored 113 quantitative studies to show which conditions have the best evidence of mHealth success. Likewise, IMS found 300 clinical trials. While smartphone usage skews younger, clinical trial participation skews older reflecting the demographics of the patient populations of many of the treated conditions.
- 53% seniors
- 24% adults
- 9% child & adult
- 8% child, adult, & senior
- 6% child
Barriers to Adoption
The IMS report looks in depth at the increase of the “prescribed app” and finds some of the barriers to further adoption. One point was the need for EHR integration:
“…I don’t think we’re going to do a good systematic job until we can embed it in the EHR. And the only reason I say that is because we haven’t been successful with much of anything else when we weren’t able to embed it in EHR. When we can embed other things in the EHR that way, we’ve been wildly successful.”
– Lee Vermeulen, University of Wisconsin
We can’t really do justice to this excellent white paper in a short Wire story. Grab your own copy here:
