Mobile health round-up: March

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eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Resident Guide looking for Kiwi pilot sites

MedApps is looking for New Zealand sites to pilot its Resident Guide app. Resident Guide is a cloud-based dashboard and mobile application for delivering clinical onboarding, quality improvement and well-being resources to clinicians.

The platform is live at 28 facilities in Queensland and New South Wales and has recently gone live at Metro North HHS. MedApps has also welcomed its first nursing graduates to the platform.

Co-chief executive Tom Collins says the app drives superior engagement with an 88 per cent open and read rate for documents versus the 20 per cent email benchmark. The company is looking for a New Zealand-based pilot site to help prove the concept.

Data sharing by popular health apps ‘routine’

Research published in BMJ shows that data sharing with third parties from health-related mobile apps is routine.

The paper describes how an international team of researchers analysed the data traffic of 24 medication apps that keep track of the user’s prescription drugs and medical conditions.

Lead author, Quinn Grundy of the University of Toronto’s school of nursing says, “We'd hoped that health data would be treated as personal and sensitive and I think we’re disappointed to see that the kind of sharing going on was really business as usual as for any other kind of app”.

Dietary apps effective, study shows

A new research paper shows dietary mobile apps help people suffering from chronic disease to lose weight.

The paper, published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, says interventions in a person’s diet are effective prevention and treatment strategies for chronic diseases, but require extensive time and resources. However, dietary apps are becoming popular and the aim of the review was to assess their effectiveness.

The study concludes that “dietary mobile apps are effective self-monitoring tools, and that their use results in positive effects on measured nutritional outcomes in chronic diseases, especially weight loss”.

Waikato researchers create Positively Pregnant app

Researchers at the University of Waikato have created an app to help prevent antenatal and postnatal distress.

Positively Pregnant brings together useful local information, activities, ideas to start conversations with whanau, and ways for pregnant women to assess how they are coping, then find strategies to deal with any stress or anxiety they may be facing.

The researchers completed a pilot study in which 88 women used Positively Pregnant, and using their feedback they modified the interactive, individualised app for launch to the public in December 2018.

Kiwi mum launches Kite app

A Kiwi mum has launched an app for mums to work on their personal development and improve their wellbeing.

Hannah Hardy-Jones, an HR professional and mother of two from Christchurch, launched the Kite Programme to provide mothers with support, solutions and coping techniques to face the challenges that being a mother presents.

Based on micro-learning, there are 14 mini programmes, called Kites, and each kite contains 14–30 tasks. The app delivers one activity per day, but it will wait for prompting before it gives a new activity.

Read more news:

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