[Apps in General Medicine : A topic for medical education?​]

Health-related apps can provide helpful resources for both doctors and patients. The selection of potentially useful apps and the appraisal of their quality are particularly important in the context of medicine as false or confusing app content may put patients at risk.

In this article a brief overview of the topic is provided and the results of a pilot study, in which medical students tested and evaluated the quality of 143 health-related apps on the topics of cardiology and pulmonology are presented.

Using the semiautomated retrospective app store analysis (SARASA) method, a group of apps concerned with cardiology and pulmonology were identified from a pool of over 2,000,000 apps available in the Apple Store. As part of a practical exercise, 138 4th year medical students tested a total of 143 of these apps, subsequently evaluating them using a specially devised questionnaire.

The most frequent target population among the tested apps was identified as patients and their carers and the primary purpose in the majority of cases was the provision of information. Despite this, at least one quarter of all apps tested required users to enter sensitive health-related information. The evaluations by the students portrayed a large range in terms of the quality of the apps tested.

Health-related apps play a growing role in the management of illnesses in the field of internal medicine. Doctors must be aware of the benefits and limitations of using such apps and should be prepared during their medical studies for the challenge of advising patients on this topic.