Some 9,000 iPhone health applications are already offered by Apple's AppStore and the number is expected to continue rising further in coming months, according to a report published by MobiHealthNews.
The report, which is based on an analysis of Apple's AppStore, further indicates that by next summer the number of iPhone health applications will rise by 44 percent to some 13,000 apps.
The report shows that the average price of a paid health app is gradually rising as the average price for a paid health application rose to $3.21 on July 2011 from $2.77 in February.
Another report, published earlier this month by research company Technavio, predicts that the global mobile health applications market will reach $4.1 billion by 2014 compared to $1.7 billion in 2010.
"The number of health apps for consumers has grown at a steady, linear rate over the past 18 months," MobileHealthNews researchers wrote. "We expect it to continue on this track unless the regulatory environment changes drastically and scares off would-be developers from creating useful health apps for consumers"
The MobiHealthNews report indicates that the largest group of consumer health apps in the AppStore are cardio fitness apps, which account to 16.36% of all iPhone mHealth apps. The majority of these apps are running apps, which have attracted millions of users in the past year.
Diet related apps account to 14.15%, ahead of stress and relaxation apps (11.4%) and women's health apps (7.27%).
The authors note that while Apple’s health, fitness and medical categories claim to offer thousands more apps, many of these can't be seriously considered as mHealth related.
In the first 18 months since the iPhone was released it has completely changed the impact of mobile health applications on health care system, according to an article written by Mike Kirkwood, a specialist in enterprise systems.
The post was written following his attendance of the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. Kirkwook noted that "mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don't become "lost" in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider."
Dr. Mohit Kaushal, health care director for the National Broadband Taskforce, said at the conference that mHealth industry is facing several key challenges including: - The US needs to invest in infrastructure to meet the growing needs of a mobile-enabled population.
- Spectrum must be allocated (or reallocated) to meet the needs and the right areas of growth.
- Regulations need to be designed to maximize incentives for innovation in care delivery.
- There must be reimbursement incentives and viable business models for companies to succeed in delivering profitable services. In the health care system, we know that fee for service doesn't work nearly as well as an outcome based approach for delivery of health, rather than more procedures.
