Not By Apps Alone

 From the Koko Stronger blog:

Seemingly overnight, smartphone apps that track all sorts of health-related activities – eating, sleeping, running, walking, even breathing – are everywhere. There are hundreds to choose from, and next month’s Consumer Electronics Show is expected to bring a whole new wave.

These tools are popular with devotees of the Quantified Self movement, which seeks “self knowledge through numbers.” Knowledge is unquestionably good, but are today’s health apps actually improving our health? Are they benefitting less data-centric people, particularly those suffering from diabetes and other “lifestyle diseases” who need help most?

Not yet, according to a recent article in Fortune magazine. “Consumers appear to be gobbling up such apps,” writes Ryan Bradley, noting that mobile health apps for iPhones and Androids generated $718 million in revenue last year alone. “Yet so far there’s little evidence that the smartphone apps can effectively reduce lifestyle diseases or the huge costs associated with them.”

The article cites a paper by John Hopkins medical researchers who submitted health apps to a series of rigorous tests that measured their effectiveness. “The findings showed the apps were mediocre at best,” and in most cases their ability to manage disease was “low quality.”

The problem with health apps, the article notes, is they don’t involve supervision or interaction with other people. In contrast, low-tech diabetes prevention programs that bring people together in weekly meetings – to share experiences with others and receive expert guidance about lifestyle changes – have proven to be effective.

Is it truly an either/or situation? Do we have to choose between technology and human-to-human healthcare? Is the future of digital health as dubious as the story’s headline – “Health apps don’t save people, people do” – suggests?

Absolutely not. Unleashing the potential of digital health requires combining technology and all the very real benefits it brings with human oversight, interaction and guidance. Here at Koko, we could have build a fitness club run entirely by gadgets and faceless algorithms. Instead, we built a Digital Gym where digital technology and human guidance are combined in powerful new ways. The success stories we’ve been sharing here on the Stronger Blog speak for themselves.

Apps alone won’t solve the world’s health problems. But apps and people, working together, just might.