Why one Aussie physician thinks mHealth apps are 'useless'

While new mHealth apps are being developed and released daily, one physician suggests such apps are not worth anything, as they focus on programs that don't actually address any issues within the healthcare system, according to a report by The Sydney Morning Herald.

George Margelis, MD, adjunct associate professor at the TeleHealth Research & Innovation Laboratory at the University of Western Sydney, suggests health apps are of little use to medical professionals as they currently stand.

"To date [mHealth apps] have been focused on low-lying fruit such as fitness tracking and not focused on the big issues of management of disease which consumes the bulk of the cost of the healthcare system and resources," Dr. Margelis said in the report. "Unfortunately, managing these diseases, in particular the chronic diseases that are a major part of the current burden, requires more than just tracking a few physical parameters, which is what the app world is up to."

Dr. Margelis recommends increasing education of both developers and healthcare professionals on developing models of care that effectively use the technology, as well as educating healthcare professionals on the usability of mHealth technology.

"Capturing data that can't be used by the clinicians treating a patient or providing useless information to clinicians which swamp their systems with poor data doesn't lead to better healthcare," Dr. Margelis said in the report.

Although Dr. Margelis is an Australian clinician and spoke largely of implementing the mHealth apps with Australia's federal eHealth systems, the principles of interoperability and integration still apply in the United States. Dr. Margelis alluded to issues of physicians not knowing how to use technology and platforms that have poor functionality, which are issues the United States is also currently mitigating.

More articles on mHealth:

12 states revisiting their telemedicine policies
Fitbit-Apple split traced to Fitbit's own smartwatch plans
Study: Homeless vets willing, able to use mHealth

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