Grant: CIHR Fellowship

There are over 100,000 mobile health applications (apps), which are targeted primarily at people looking to manage or prevent chronic disease. Health apps are largely unregulated with little oversight of whether they are effective, safe, or secure. It is difficult for consumers to tell who sponsored an app or developed its content. This makes it challenging to detect bias, find an accountable party should something go wrong or assess whether an app is trustworthy. Commercial interests, such as pharmaceutical or fitness companies, may use health apps to expand consumer markets, which can drive up healthcare costs. The purpose of this study is to identify risks of bias in commercially available health apps. I will first perform a social network analysis of 297 top-rated health apps to discover the identities of their developers and funding sources and how they are related. Preliminary analysis suggests a small number of multinational corporations not traditionally associated with health act as gatekeepers for health information and consumer data. I will analyze the content of a subset of apps focused on mental health and will develop and evaluate a toolkit for consumers to select safe and quality apps. Finally, I will analyze the regulatory environment for health apps, which fall between several sectors including health, telecommunications and advertising. This analysis will inform advocacy work by identifying target policymakers, highlighting gaps and suggesting priorities for policy development. Consumers are being increasingly influenced by mobile health apps and so it is important to explore the interests at work and how they interact to shape health information if these apps are to confer health benefits. This study will give consumers a better understanding of which apps they can trust to support their health and inform policy development to protect consumer interests.