Mobile apps - how can they improve healthcare access and health outcomes?

IMMEDIATE Insight by Chiara Di Lucente

Mobile apps for digital health have emerged as game-changers in this field, letting people be more aware of their health state, access more easily to healthcare services and improve their health outcomes. That means, in our fast-paced world, having a suitable means of empowerment at our fingertips, that allows us to manage our health, monitor vital signs, and even consult with healthcare professionals remotely. This article explores the transformative features of health digital apps, especially concerning the opportunities they hold and their potential impact on patient’s health outcomes and the healthcare sector.

Digital health interventions for health

Nowadays, health systems in the different countries of the world may differ one from another, but at the same time, they face very similar challenges, like the difficulty accessing healthcare services for more fragile and disadvantaged population groups, geographical inaccessibility, low demand for services, delayed provision of care, low adherence to clinical protocols and costs to individuals. All of that may contribute to accumulated losses in global health system performance. In recent years, digital technologies seem to show novel opportunities to address these challenges and offer the potential to enhance the coverage and quality of health practices and services. In particular, the use of digital health interventions (such as websites, mobile phone communication, and mobile apps) has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a way to successfully deliver health interventions and reduce risk factors for chronic diseases. In fact, with over 5 billion people using the internet globally, these technologies have the potential to address health disparities by enabling the delivery of sophisticated services to people and communities that cannot access traditional forms of care. They can also be used to deliver effective health interventions at scale, with high fidelity, at a low cost. Besides, to increase service demand and access to health information, digital health interventions could be utilized, for instance, to enable targeted communications to people via reminders and health promotion media content and messaging. Health professionals may also be the target of digital health initiatives, which provide them with faster access to clinical procedures through telemedicine consultations with other health professionals or decision-support tools, among other means. Moreover, also researchers can benefit from digital health interventions, that can serve as tools for health measurement and can provide population-level health data, improving healthcare research and epidemiological studies. As for particular areas of improvement, systematic reviews of research trials evaluating the use and effectiveness of digital interventions have provided evidence that such interventions can improve nutrition, physical activity, and weight status of users.

Mobile apps and their features

Considering that a large number of people use smartphones globally, among all the digital interventions, mHealth apps have the potential to greatly enhance patient outcomes. In particular, one of the primary focus of mHealth apps' specific outcomes is on medication adherence, weight control, physical activity, quitting smoking and promoting healthy behaviours. For instance, according to WHO, 61% of the people who downloaded and started using mHealth apps have managed successfully to increase their physical activity. Apps for behaviour modification showed quite successful outcomes in treating eating disorders, lowering anxiety, and lowering the risk of obesity. Such mobile health treatments have demonstrated variable degrees of success in terms of drug adherence and treatment outcomes: clinical trials have been conducted to assess the efficacy of various cell phone applications and text message therapies for diabetes control, hypertension control, and medication adherence. When the condition and the treatment are quite complex, such as in cancer patients, mobile applications are utilized to increase health literacy and hence compliance. Mobile apps were also discovered to be effective in enhancing emotional and mental health. Moreover, the usage of mHealth apps in self-monitoring provides excellent control for people with chronic health conditions. In conclusion, when practiced as a self-care strategy, mobile apps can help lessen the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress; promote a healthy lifestyle and motivate participants to take their medications as directed, which will increase patient compliance and decrease the number of visits to medical facilities and personnel. In a place where they feel safe, these solutions also enable patients to take an active role in their health.

But how might these results be achieved through mobile apps? They can use hardware and sensors (such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, heart rate sensors, geo sensors, GPS, and cameras) to get data and real-time insights about users’ health. As a result, mobile apps offer new ways to continuously monitor biological, behavioural, or environmental data, health markers, and health-related trends. Furthermore, mobile apps can assist modify attitudes and behaviours by distributing, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting health-related information, as well as enabling interventions based on well-defined frameworks (that are used also in non-digital contexts), such as cognitive behavioural therapy techniques. Finally, several studies point out that hospital and in-patient visits to doctors' offices can be largely replaced by smartphone-based aftercare and assessments, which will remove obstacles, save time and reduce travel and administrative burdens. Through all of these features, mobile health apps have enormous potential to close gaps in healthcare access, encourage healthy lifestyle choices, and improve patient compliance because of all these aspects. The widespread use of smartphones across the world ensures the scalability and range of these tools, making them potentially crucial interventions in the present-day medical environment.

Sources:

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• Jakob R, Harperink S, Rudolf AM, Fleisch E, Haug S, Mair JL, Salamanca-Sanabria A, Kowatsch T. Factors Influencing Adherence to mHealth Apps for Prevention or Management of Noncommunicable Diseases: Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res. 2022 May 25;24(5):e35371. doi: 10.2196/35371. PMID: 35612886; PMCID: PMC9178451. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/311941/9789241550505-eng.pdf?ua=1