This appeared last week:
Only 15% of healthcare apps meet safety standards, research reveals
Only 15% of healthcare apps meet minimum safety standards, highlighting a “desperate need” for a proper review process, new research has concluded.
Andrea Downey – Oct 9, 2019
Health app evaluation organisation ORCHA evaluated more than 5,000 apps against 260 performance and compliance factors and found that majority do not meet the minimum safety requirements.
Most notably, 75% of apps aimed at people with blood pressure concerns and 85% of femtech and pregnancy apps do not meet ORCHA’s quality threshold.
Liz Ashall-Payne, ORCHA’s chief executive, said: “We believe that digital health apps are one of the most important tools available to help tackle health issues in an ageing population that’s facing more complex, long-term problems.
“The fact that only 15% of apps that we review meet the minimum standards show there is a desperate need to regularly and properly assess the apps available to ensure that people are protected against the serious risks associated with downloading ineffective or even harmful apps.”
There are seven stages to ORCHA’s evaluation process, including compliance with standards, guidance and best practice; key functions and features; and an evaluation score against the organisation’s key requirements.
ORCHA then liaises with developers to iron out any kinks discovered in the review process, before the app is published.
As well as conducting reviews for NHS England and NHS Digital, OCRHA is working with organisations including the Local Growth Hub, through Health Innovation Exchange, and Sci-Tech Daresbury to reach more businesses in Liverpool.
More here:
This is certainly a comprehensive review and the results are important in warning us that it is a wild west out there with competing apps.
It is well worth-while to visit the site to see just how thorough the organization is with the review process:
Here is the link:
They are a really professional and well endorsed organization so what they say is worth noting.
David.
For those not following #myhealthrecord on twitter, a series of cartoons has been tweeted. They come from someone calling themselves Jenner at @DocRat and the cartoons start here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.docrat.com.au/comic/my-health-record-1/
This is what the site says about the creator:
Jenner
Jenner has been an Australian newspaper and magazine cartoonist for over twenty years, drawing professionally and non-professionally in both the Australian and US scene in the small amount of time outside his duties as a full-time doctor. He is currently working in a city general practice, and has adopted the anonymous pen name Jenner as an ethical courtesy.
Although a daily strip on the Internet is four years old, his Doc Rat character has been appearing in medical and non-medical magazines for over a decade, including Bush Alert, vicdoc and the Medical Journal of Australia. Jenner is currently editorial cartoonist for Australian Doctor Weekly.
Thanks, Bernard you earned a key tag. This is an excellent set of explanations. Hopefully they get broader exposure
ReplyDelete@Long Love T.38:
ReplyDeleteDon't hold your breath.
"There's none so deaf as those who will not hear and none so blind as those who will not see."
Proverb
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair
Although you'd think someone trained in history would get the message even if they didn't understand it.
Good to see the UK health environment starting to show signs of recovery. There are still many areas that are problematic thanks to the previous administration misguided works in care.data, analytics and broader clinical information and communication investments.
ReplyDeleteBernard I had not followed the Myhr or ADHA twitter feeds for some time. Having had a look, They are embarrassing in the low level of interest generated. Most have 1-2 likes, so it obvious no one even at the ADHA follows. Some articles drew my attention to just how much the ADHA pushes opinion, not fact. What has happened to our institutions when the policy is based on the ideas and opinions of unqualified individuals rather than on scientific facts.