An app a day will (probably not) keep the doctor away: an evidence audit of health and medical apps available on the Apple App Store (17 July 2024)

Summary

There are more than 350,000 health apps available in public app stores. The stated benefits of health apps are numerous and well documented. However, there are also concerns that poor-quality apps, marketed directly to consumers, threaten the tenets of evidence-based medicine and expose individuals to the risk of harm. This study aimed to address this issue by assessing the overall quality of evidence publicly available to support the effectiveness claims of health apps marketed directly to consumers.

The authors found the quality of evidence available to support the effectiveness claims of health apps marketed directly to consumers to be poor. Less than half of the 220 apps (44%) audited state that they have evidence to support their claims of effectiveness and, of these allegedly evidence-based apps, more than 70% rely on either very low or low-quality evidence.