Health tracking – the new frontier in self care?
Since the COVID pandemic, there has been a marked increase in the general public’s awareness of their own health and developments in technology have supported an explosion in the arena of health related applications. In 2023 alone, the health app industry generated $3.43 billion, an increase of 9.9% on the previous year. In the same year, there were 31 million health app users with 379 million individual health app downloads. Weight loss and fitness tracker apps dominate the market but in recent years, more targeted health apps have been developed to support people with specific health needs.
Last year, downloads of apps supporting blood pressure (BP) monitoring and the tracking of cardiovascular health has increased by 500% since 2019 and downloads of apps supporting type 1/2 diabetes management had increased by 190% since 2020. In-app purchases of health related devices had increased by 31% between 2022 and 2023.
Even more granularly, there are apps now available for all sorts of specific health issues. Bearable allows those with mood disorders to track symptoms, journal emotions and identify key triggers for mental health. The American Parkinson Disease Association have developed the APDA Symptom Tracker for those with Parkinsons (and their relatives) to monitor and track symptoms as they progress. For those with gastrointestinal disorders, the mySymptoms app allows them to maintain to-the-minute food diaries and helps identify common triggers; for those with skin disorders or melanoma, there is the SkinVision app; for women trying to conceive or wishing to track their menstrual cycle, there is Flo. The list goes on.
The benefits of such apps are manifold. Health apps such as those listed allow those with specific health issues to take back some ownership over their own health and wellbeing by supporting them in management of their day-to-day condition and helping to identify any triggers for symptoms. An even greater benefit is in supporting their discussions with HCPs and allowing early identification of new or developing symptoms. With conditions such as Parkinsons this is particularly important, allowing HCPs to intervene with appropriate targeted therapy in a timely manner, potentially offsetting Parkinsonian decline. Data from health apps can become an important part of the overall picture of a patient’s condition.
LDA Research are proud to be a part of this new digital revolution in healthcare. We have supported studies for healthcare app beta testing in the areas of rare disease, pregnancy and mental health. Ensuring high calibre respondents is our priority and we utilise multiple avenues to ensure that the sample for any study is met. We have a bespoke panel of rare disease patients and our social media group, the Rare Disease Network, enables outreach to further patients with niche conditions to support clients in this area. We use other social media, connections with charities, HCP referrals and our network of international recruiters across the globe to ensure that full sample is met. Once recruited, we use several unique verification methods to guarantee that the respondents we are recruiting for app testing are exactly who the client is looking for.
