Mobile health applications are enjoying growing success with smartphone users. However, they could turn out to be dangerous. The society Heliceum, specializing in the development of applications, denounces a lack of regulation and insufficient data security.
“To date, anyone can upload a medical or wellness application, without any scientific authority validating its relevance,” the company explains. Without control, some applications could give erroneous health advice, propose unbalanced diets that could cause deficiencies or even suggest an unauthorized drug. And personal health information could fall into unknown hands. Heliceum reports regulatory, economic, structural and technological limits to the development of the “m-health” industry.
Applications and e-health
Among the solutions offered by the company: self-regulation and the creation of a quality label to differentiate recreational wellness applications from medical applications, and data encryption to manage and protect the personal medical records of smartphone users.
This warning applies only to mobile applications, while other areas of e-health have received the approval of the scientific community. As relayed by the blog Sante-Digitale.fr, “the field of video games used in a scientific setting is a very present subject in the medical world.” The serious games are a perfect example: they can be used to promote rehabilitation in patients who have undergone surgery.
