Hematology on the Move: How Are
Mobile Health Apps Helping Patients?
To say that health-related mobile
apps are trending would be an
understatement. Google the term
“health-care apps” and more than 71
million results come rocketing back.
More and more people are relying on
devices to count their steps, track their
activity levels, keep an eagle-eye on
their calorie count, or even figure out
what caused that itchy rash on their leg.
By the same token, more patients with
acute and chronic diseases are turning to
mobile apps to learn about their condition
or monitor their symptoms and treatment.
Mobile health market trends have
estimated that 500 million smartphone
users worldwide, including health-care
professionals and patients, will use some
sort of health-care app by the end of 20151
and that, by 2018, the number of users
could rise to more than 3.4 billion.2
Mobile health apps have proven
popular with consumers, and physicians
are beginning to integrate them into
their practices as another tool to enhance
patient-physician communication.
The purported benefits of medical
mobile apps include easy accessibility
to information and the fact that these
apps offer another way for healthcare practitioners to be in touch with
patients after the office visit is over.
But what are the drawbacks associated
with the booming mobile health app
market? And, even if patients are
initially gung ho about downloading
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ASH Clinical News
apps, are they using them with as much
enthusiasm over time?
ASH Clinical News spoke with mobile
health app experts for an overview of the
market, and to learn how it will need to
grow and adapt to meet patient needs.
The survey consisted of 36 items that
assessed respondents’ sociodemographic
characteristics, history, and reasons for
health mobile app use or non-use, perceived
effectiveness of health apps, reasons for
stopping use, and general health status.3
”Mobile technology helps us partner
with patients in the context of their
daily lives with bi-directional communication capabilities.”
—JUDE JONASSAINT, RN
Who Really Uses Apps?
Paul Krebs, PhD, an assistant professor
in the Department of Population Health
and a member of the New York University
Cancer Institute’s Epidemiology & Cancer
Control Research Program, as well as a
clinical psychologist at the VA New York
Harbor Healthcare System, may have
some answers about the demographics of
health-care mobile app users.
Dr. Krebs and a colleague conducted
a cross-sectional survey of 1,604
smartphone users in the United States
that examined health-care mobile app use,
finding that most people are interested
in fitness- and nutrition-focused apps.
Results were published in the Journal
of Medical Internet Research (JMIR).
Slightly more than half (58.23%) of
respondents had downloaded a healthrelated mobile app on their smartphones.
Among this cohort, fitness and nutrition
applications were the most commonly
accessed, with most respondents reporting
that they used these on a daily basis.
“Individuals more likely to use health
apps tended to be younger, have higher
incomes, be more educated, be Latino/
Hispanic, and have a body mass index in the
obese range (all p<0.05),” the authors wrote.
For the 42 percent of respondents
who did not download a health-care
January 2016