Myth 4 We have SOOOO many health apps……..right???

WRONG!

Everyone talks about how many apps we have to help us to stay healthy and well or to manage our health and how the number of apps available has grown from 30,000 in 2013 to a whopping 327,000 as of today, BUT this isn’t really a true picture.

I can hear you asking WHY…….

Well if we take the 327,000 apps and first of all ask how many of these are ACTUALLY active meaning how many are looked after, updated and kept fresh. The answer is only 112,000.

Ok so we have 112,000 health apps, so that’s still a lot…..isn’t it?

Wrong again! If you now look at those apps, and apply a layer of evaluation, looking at whether the app is data secure, clinically safe or has met design standards, you will find only 10-15% pass, which means we are now at 15,000 health apps.

So, is this enough? 15,000 is still a large enough number……..right?

WRONG…………why?

Let me explain, if there are 400 clinical condition areas and you have 1 app for each in both app stores, apple and google, you need 800.

You then add in some different dimensions of personal needs and characteristics like Age, Gender, Visual, hearing or cognitive impairment

Add in another layer of personal preferences:

I want an app with a social network, I want an app which teaches me more about my condition, I cant pay for an app, I want an app which has games in it, I want it to work with my fitbit, garmin, alexa…..hopefully you get the picture……….lots of dimensions.

Well here at ORCHA we have worked out that if we want to help our populations find great apps across this range of needs and preferences we need around 30,000…………..and we only have half of that!

So the reality is we do not have enough great health apps, we need MORE innovation, we need these innovations to be of high quality and we need to help people get access to them.

This week it is the wonderful NHS Innovation EXPO, we are really excited to share how we are supporting over 15million people to find great health apps. We are also really keen to meet new innovations and organisations who want to use great apps!

If you have time, pop over and have a chat with the ORCHA team, we are in the innovation zone and are ready to meet you!