Quality-assured information on all relevant health apps
Health apps are on the rise. HealthOn helps to identify the global, confusing health market of health and medical apps. Consumers and patients alike can benefit from this and draw truly relevant offerings from it. A test report and a checklist.
In April 2018, over 800 health apps were evaluated for the first time in German-speaking countries. For this purpose, digital health experts were recruited to examine important key data in e-health for HealthOn, an independent comparison portal.
German-language offerings were tested, e.g. diabetes, back pain, blood pressure and asthma apps as well as apps that support a healthy lifestyle, e.g. relaxation, exercise, nutrition, vaccination and prevention apps. An online test provides information about the evaluation criteria. The quality assessment is based on accepted scientific standards for good health information (DISCERN, HON-Code).
In the form of quality-assured test reports, the portal for health and medical apps now features different grades.
The test reports provide information on this,
- what the health and medical apps can do and
- how the apps perform in terms of security and trustworthiness. Users can compare apps with each other and choose the one that suits them best. App find
Find Good Health Apps Checklist
HealthOn also offers an online checklist for orientation purposes, which users can use to assess the individual risk of a Health app be able to assess themselves. HealthOn wants to make users aware of the neuralgic points that they can check themselves before using a health app and thus strengthen the digital health literacy of consumers and patients. Only in this way can citizens use health and medical apps in a self-determined and safe manner for their own benefit.
App listed on HealthOn? Quick Check:
App sellers can use a special search to find out whether an app is already listed on HealthOn without prior registration. Apps whose providers provide transparent information about the scientific soundness of the health information and the security of user data are marked by HealthOn with the HealthOn seal for trustworthy health apps.
800 test reports on HealthOn - an important milestone
The investigation did not avoid a "manual" review of the offers, the opening of the potentially relevant apps and the examination of the content and its evidence as well as the functionalities and the data streams by an experienced, interdisciplinary team of examiners. Many years of experience made the experts cautiously skeptical that a "semi-automatic retrospective app store Analysis (SARASA)" as recently announced by the internists in order to achieve results more efficiently and sustainably. Finally, it is a matter of patient safety.
Sources:
- Health apps tested, April 2018 https://www.healthon.de/gesundheitsapps_testberichte
- Learning from portals worldwide. http://e-health-com.de/fileadmin/user_upload/dateien/Downloads/EHC_6_2017_Gesundheits_Apps_Lit.pdf
- HealthOn Stats, April 2018 https://www.healthon.de/healthon-statistiken
- Online test for app vendors: https://www.healthon.de/app-test_fuer_entwickler
- HealthOn Code of Ethics https://www.healthon.de/ehrenkodex
- Structure of the independent HealthOn test reports. https://www.healthon.de/aufbau-testberichte
- Find "Good" Health Apps Checklist. https://www.healthon.de/checkliste
- App listed yet? https://www.healthon.de/app-schon-gelistet
- Health apps with HealthOn seal: Become a quality partner: https://www.healthon.de/gesundheitsapps_qualitaetspartnerschaft
- Internists screen and classify health apps. German Medical Journal, 27 March 2018
