This is a guest post by David Soulsby, project engineer at Plextek Consulting, a Cambridge-based firm that designs services and electronic products for the communications, defence, automotive, industrial, scientific and medical markets.

Google recently announced Google Play for Education, a section of the Android app store where apps are approved for use in education. Apps submitted to this section must meet a set of criteria for use in the classroom and are evaluated by a third-party network of educators.

As a developer with an interest in the mHealth (mobile health) space, I'd like to see Google create another store: Google Play for Health, where apps are approved based on their medical accuracy, usefulness and for the security they give to the user's data.

Of course, the Google Play store doesn't have an approvals process, so developers can upload apps and have them available in minutes. However, when it comes to medical apps this is not necessarily best for the user. A recent test of apps currently available for helping diagnose skin cancer found that three out of four did not correctly assess 30 percent or more of melanomas. This is obviously concerning.

If a developer wants to create an app providing medical advice or insight, the burden should be on that developer to prove that it is not detrimental. Apple has taken similar moves with its own app store, requesting that developers provide sources to verify medical information within their applications.

Furthermore, apps that handle health information about a user should be required to secure this information. For example, apps in a Google Play for Health section would have to meet basic data security requirements such as not saving files to public folders.

a market worth being in

It is predicted that the mHealth apps market will reach $26 billion (£16 billion) by 2017. This revolution in healthcare may generate a lot of money for developers, but it will also help to reduce the costs.

To use the previous example, while the apps were failing to analyse melanomas correctly, the same research showed that these apps were far cheaper than carrying out a full practitioner-led diagnosis.

The cost of physician-based diagnostic is around $5 (£3) per lesion, while an app would typically cost less than $5 and can diagnose an unlimited number of lesions.

R Salmon, a GP that spoke with me about the benefits of mHealth apps, commented: "The internet has been a bad thing for healthcare because it has given people a route to self diagnosis from various sources without much consideration to the actual problem.

"However, apps have helped to ease this issue as they are more focused on one area of healthcare, so in the case of moles, you know you have a dodgy mole, you image it and the app gives you an indication of what to do next. But, this can also have negative connotations as apps may miss rarer forms of melanoma. Ultimately, the outcome of the app is never the final answer and patients need to be educated about this."

He adds, of the benefits apps can bring: "Apps have made an impact on GPs as they enable people to visit their doctor earlier than they would (especially in men) and we also have the evidence and initial data in front of us, so we can refer to the secondary care specialists much sooner."


The FDA has recently issued its final draft on guidelines for medical apps, which it's expected the EU will follow. The guidelines indicate the intention to regulate apps that can be used as an accessory to a regulated medical device or to transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device.

However, Douglas Kamerow, chief scientist at RTI International, does not think that the FDA goes far enough: "We are still left with rafts of health-related apps that give advice that is incomplete or plain wrong... Regulating these may not be the FDA's job, but it should be someone's."

In 2018, the EU will be revamping its medical device regulation and it -- along with many other countries that are part of the International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) -- is likely to follow the FDA's lead. Self-regulation through Google Play for Health may go some way to avoid further regulation by the FDA or its counterpart organisations.

Centrally Stored Data

Google has previous experience in the healthcare field through its Google Health service, which allowed users to store healthcare data in a central location. Unfortunately, the service was discontinued because it failed to appeal to broad masses.

I suggest that along with creating a Google Play for Health app store, Google Health is resurrected and expanded. In addition to healthcare records, Google Health would also store anonymised health data gathered from approved and secure apps in the Google Play for Health store. Users could then give permission to these apps to upload data relevant to health, such as calorie intake and heart rate monitor data, while allowing other apps to download and analyse this data for them.

This information could then be shared -- again with the user's permission -- with healthcare professionals or other trusted individuals. The ability to access this database would incentivise developers to join the Google Play Health app store.

This approach would fulfil Google Health's original goal of putting healthcare into the hands of the consumer, which is a game changer for healthcare. It would also level the playing field for independent developers against mainstream companies, while giving healthcare professionals access to additional patient data.


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