By Lisa Jaffe Hubbell | Posted August 3 2010
I was up all night coughing and sneezing and woke up with a scratchy throat. Is it a cold or allergies? Lucky for me, there’s an app for that. The phrase, now a punch line for comedians and the final panel of comic strips, is closer to true than you might think.
There are well over 200,000 applications for smart phones. I used WebMD’s free symptom checker to assess my symptoms, and checked out the local pollen count to see if there’s a lot of ragweed around. The verdict: summer cold.
At the end of last year, there were about 5,000 health-related apps, says Claudia Tessier, RHIA, president of mHealth Initiative in Boston. The number is surely higher now, and the vast array of what’s out there makes it hard to determine what’s a good app and what might be rotten. Can a $1.99 app really cure your acne? That may be questionable. Your best bet is to stick with apps from well-known organizations, like WebMD or the American Heart Association and see what they recommend. The AHA has a free app on CPR and a first aid basics app for $3.99. For lesser-known app developers, use the web to check customer ratings.
Choosing apps that help you track something like weight or blood pressure, manage chronic diseases like diabetes, or help you to open a dialogue with your healthcare provider about issues like smoking cessation are good places to start, says Tessier. Next up, look for developers to make apps more interactive – including some that work by attaching to your phone, like this one that is in development at MIT that can test your eyesight,
Phones may also send reminders to patients from doctors, to elderly parents from children (and to children from parents) to you to ensure you are take your meds, take your walk, or take a rest. In the new world, it will be take two aspirin and your phone will call you in the morning.
CONNECT THE DOTS
The American Medical Association listed a variety of good apps for physicians that others might find of use, including a free drug reference from Epocrates. Consumer Reports listed this group as among the best late in 2009, and both Women’s Health and Men’s Health magazines have highly regarded workout apps for $1.99. Weight Watchers has a great free points tracker app, and there’s a free pedometer app for those of us more likely to leave a step counter on the nightstand than clip it to our bodies.
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