Brian Dolan, editor and co-founder of MobiHealthNews (a provider of daily online coverage & premium content/research on the mobile healthcare market) was session chair for the event and in addition to interviewing panels he gave a talk in which he showed some statistics detailing how health, fitness and medical apps are being categorised on the Apple App Store:

As well as a breakdown of the types of Apps that are featuring within the health and fitness categories:

And the “chronic condition” apps subcategory:

Of course this is just iPhone apps, so whilst it might be a good sign of future care possibilities when we’re considering the vast majority of patients it should be taken with the appropriate “bucket full” of salt (or some of the consulting services from the entrepreneurs at mobihealthnews!).

These users are not typical patients, they are: affluent, have a PC, broadband plan, WiFi, live in the USA, are young and male, employed, have an appetite for trying new apps (before immediately deleting them), etc etc.

Of more concern is that the vast majority of these are me-too, low quality apps that are produced by cookie cutting tools, they don’t address the required privacy/regulatory issues… it’s the wild west, be careful out there, and let me know if you find any nuggets!

Find out more by visiting the MobihealthNews.com website and follow him on Twitter.

This blog post is part of a series of mHealth reviews from the 2nd Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit 2010. Click here to get the full review.