UAE doctors give cautious welcome to medical apps

Smartphone apps are playing an increasingly large role in health care, but doctors say they cannot replace personal medical advice.

The developer of an online game called Mariam, which Sharjah and Dubai Police warned against using, has denied accusations that his game uses players' information as a privacy breach. Jeffrey E Biteng / The NationalShow less

ABU DHABI // Smartphone apps play a burgeoning role in health care, but doctors say they cannot replace personal medical advice.

Many apps are useful, especially preventative ones such as calorie counters or exercise schedules, but users may want to discuss them first with their physician, said Dr Jairam Aithal, specialist in cardiovascular disease at Burjeel Hospital in Abu Dhabi.

“It’s important that these apps need to first be verified and, number two, constantly updated,” he said. “Medicine is a constantly evolving process.”

Doctors are also incorporating devices linked to medical apps to better monitor and collect information about their patients, in fields such as cardiology.

Some of the thousands of available health apps, however, purport to help patients with everything from “instant blood pressure readings” using only one’s phone to helping parents conceive a boy or a girl.

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in July argued that while medical apps can be an integral part of health care, they need to be made safe and effective.

Medical apps need to be monitored and verified, said Dr Aithal. They perhaps should also be checked periodically by an expert panel to see whether the apps were useful and up to date with the latest medical advice, he added.

For example, doctors once believed that patients should exercise as much as possible, but now recommend moderate exercise for about half an hour a day, Dr Aithal said. Other patients may try to self-diagnose using apps or other information online, and “they may diagnose something they actuallydo not have”, he said.

“It is adequate up to a point, and it is even apt to use it up to a point ... but every patient is an individual, you’re not a statistic,” Dr Aithal said. “Symptoms might [mean] two different things for two different people.”

Dr Aithal said he felt the best apps on the market encouraged their users to exercise or eat healthily.

“If you ask me, I think the more important apps are the ones that are preventative,” he said.

Doctors are also finding that apps can make mobile phones become convenient and effective tools in treatment and diagnosis.

“What I realised is that mobile apps for healthcare – especially in cardiology, which is my speciality – are here to stay,” said Dr Rajesh Raipancholia, specialist cardiologist at HeartFirst Medical Centre in Dubai Healthcare City.

One example is the Vitaphone Cardiac Event Loop Recorder, which in some cases can detect heart arrhythmia when standard monitoring cannot. The device can send data about the patient’s heart rhythm to an app or a doctor’s email address, Dr Raipancholia said. The technology meant that for one patient of his, Dr Raipancholia could be notified of a cardiac event right away.

“Immediately when the problem happened, it was transmitted to my email,” he said.

Other apps can be used with medical devices to monitor blood pressure while patients are at home.

The technological developments are exciting because people can monitor their own health, but should be used in consultation with a doctor or cardiologist rather than for self-treatment.

“Relying on a professional to interpret the data is the most important thing,” said Dr Raipancholia.