A Systematic Self-Certification Model for Mobile Medical Apps

Errol Ozdalga and colleagues recently highlighted the impressive range of roles and uses of smartphones in the medical setting [1]. An important point highlighted and worth developing from this paper is the difficulties associated with accurately comparing and assessing different medical apps for smartphones. This is mainly due to the fact that medical apps are often designed with one particular focus and inherently different interfaces which often make a direct comparison between apps unfeasible. Furthermore, even apps that purport to complete the same task often include extra functionality or features that make direct evaluation impossible. One solution offered by Ozdalga et al is to survey doctors on the perceived impact of specific apps available. However I believe that this is unfeasible given the rate at which the medical app ecosystem is evolving in terms of number, range, and type of app. With thousands of medical apps available, it is highly improbable that a clinician has a working knowledge of the complete range available. As such, any surveys will be subjective depending on the target audience and consequently offer limited utility for physicians and medical students alike. Moreover, surveys regarding specific apps are usually out of date by the time they are published. What is more important, is establishing a systematic method by which medical apps can be compared and their utility for health care professionals validated.

One proposed method to solve this is to develop a set of standard criteria that can be used to systematically assess the utility of a medical app for a health care professional. I believe that the most efficient and effective method should be based on a self-certification system with key criteria that have been adapted from the Health on the Net foundation (HON, [2]). Table 1 shows potential self-certification criteria which medical apps could be reasonably expected to achieve in order to establish the validity of the information contained within the app. The Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) for medical and health websites addresses one of Internet's main health care issues: the reliability and credibility of information. It is therefore highly applicable to medical apps that are subject to the same issues.

Using this system, it would then possible to set up a self-certification process where registered developers could highlight the fact that their app conforms to these basic criteria. At the moment, no such organization exists although there is clearly scope for such an entity. With the impending launch of the United Kingdom National Health Service App Store, it appears that there has never been a better time to develop a self-certification model for medical apps.