The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 issue 5 (Oct) | Page 30

The Secret Recipe of Meaningful Digital Health
Continued from page 27

exchange of digitally-encoded data, known to the specialist as
the Internet of Things (IoT), is beginning to pervade the everyday lives of the average person.

of healthcare-related apps, physicians and patients face a decision that is at once confusing as well as risky.
The Best mHealth Solutions Extend Patient-Provider
Relationships
Recently, a handful of mobile digital tools are emerging which
demonstrate clinical effectiveness; thus, the JAMA articles concedes that, if done right, there is great promise in this space.

Given this context, mobile applications, connected devices, and
wearable technologies might assist the healthcare professional in
at least three salient ways:
1. Provide useful and timely education to patients between their
scheduled in-clinic visits.
2. Given the ubiquity of data collection, these devices can also
help to establish a digital monitoring environment that enables
providers to collect patient vitals remotely from a patient’s home
or work. With this high-resolution data, such real-time monitoring
might further facilitate early diagnosis and intervention.

For example, WellDoc, a Baltimore-based company, has developed BlueStar, a mobile app that enables type 2 diabetics to
continuously manage their condition. BlueStar is data-driven,
and is based upon the most up-to-date behavioral science. By
way of patient-entered data, the app analyzes trends in blood
glucose levels, carbohydrate consumption, and medication use
in order to provide dynamic feedback and real-time coaching.
What separates BlueStar from the other 968 diabetes-related
apps is that WellDoc has shown, through a robust clinical trial,
that the patients who used the app had a 1.9% decrease in glycated hemoglobin (A1C) levels over the course of 12 months, as
compared with a 0.7% decrease in the standard of care group6.
Finally, BlueStar is seamlessly integrated into the provider’s clinical care workflow: it is a mobile therapy that is given only in
the form of an official prescription and it automatically delivers real-time patient data to the provider through a secure web
portal. Thus, BlueStar is unique in the sense that it is clinically
proven, it is seamlessly integrated into clinical practice, and it
extends care beyond the four walls of the clinic.
Another company, 1EQ, based out of Washington, D.C., has
taken a similar approach to obstetric care. They have designed
a mobile app, named Babyscripts, as the first mobile, clinical
solution that enables obstetricians to remotely monitor lowrisk pregnancies. Like BlueStar, Babyscripts seeks to extend the
patient-provider relationship, and it is designed to be integrated
into the provider’s clinical care workflow. Babyscripts is pre-

3. Finally, on the patient side, through self-awareness
of one’s clinical values, personalized goal-setting and
dynamic feedback logics, mob ile apps might influence
patient behavior.
Unvalidated Health Apps = Noise
Given this great opportunity, it is unsurprising that
more than 40,000 medical apps have become available
to patients and providers alike.
Yet, despite the recent proliferation of mobile digital tools
in the healthcare space, key questions remain surrounding the efficacy of these tools to improve quality of care,
expand access to health data, and reduce healthcare costs3.
The general consensus, particularly in the scientific
community, is that, at this point, mobile digital tools
generate inordinate buzz, with little efficacy4,5. A recent
article, by the The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), concluded that “medical app
development is outpacing the vetting process5.” Few
apps, if any, even attempt to prove the stated claims of
their products. And, given the bewildering array

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mHealth Summit Feature - November 8-11, 2015