What Are the Best Apps Out There for Improving Your Health?
Curious to know what apps are available to you to help you manage a variety of health conditions? At the ADCES 2021 conference, experts discussed the best options out there from diabetes prevention to weight management to exercise and more.
Diabetes apps can be useful tools to monitor and improve your health. They can make it easier to keep track of your glucose, diet and exercise data, and can assist both you and your healthcare provider when you are working collaboratively. Rachel Stahl, a dietician and endocrinology specialist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, explained how some of the latest mobile apps can help you manage your diabetes.
- Apps can help you track and improve your diet and exercise. Exercise and nutrition apps, such as MyFitnessPal and CalorieKing, provide users with an extensive database of choices to easily keep track of workouts and food. These apps can support lifestyle changes by reminding you throughout the day to log your meals, drink water, stand and move, and much more.
- Many apps can analyze this data in a way that is useful when working with your healthcare provider. Several apps can automatically track and graph your glucose values throughout the day. These apps can analyze daily patterns in your glucose levels to provide personalized insights on how to avoid high or low glucose values. Your endocrinologist or diabetes care expert can use this data to help detect patterns and trends. They can help you figure out what is working well and areas where you need improvement. In some cases, your healthcare provider can also monitor your health remotely through the app.
- Apps still have privacy concerns and can benefit from additional clinical evidence. Not all apps are regulated in the same way, and there is a risk of privacy issues if the app company is hacked. Clinical evidence in support of apps is still limited; however, a growing number of clinical trials support the safety and efficacy of mobile health apps.
Moving forward, Stahl said, it’s increasingly clear that mobile apps will play a larger role in health tracking and diabetes self-management. These apps have great potential – yet to be truly proven – to improve clinical outcomes and can foster collaboration with your healthcare provider.
Included below are some top-rated exercise and nutrition apps.
| Category | Free and Publicly Available | Top Clinical Rating |
| Exercise | Runkeeper – GPS-enabled fitness activity tracking; HealthKit integrated | Fitbit – GPS-enabled activity tracking; food log, wireless device and smart-scale connectivity |
| Healthy Eating and Weight Management | MyFitnessPal – Food log with barcode scanning capability; HealthKit integrated | Noom Coach: Health & Weight – Subscription-model health coaching with tracking and relevant content |
| Stress Management | Headspace – Proprietary guided meditations as well as useful educational background videos | Headspace – Proprietary guided meditations as well as useful educational background videos |
| Smoking Cessation | Kwit – Motivates users by tracking the accrued financial and health benefits of not smoking | Clickotine – Subscription program includes coaching, connection to quit aids, as well as various tracking and educational features |
| Alcohol Moderation | AlcoDroid Alcohol Tracker – Alcohol consumption tracker, drinks diary and blood alcohol content calculator | Drinkaware – Lifestyle app that tracks the units and calories in your drinks |
| Alcohol and Substance Abuse | My Spiritual Toolkit – AA 12 Steps App Alcoholics – Content, personal diary, and calculators for recovering alcoholics | Pear reSET – Contains a series of interactive therapy lessons with information to help support your recovery |
| Diabetes Prevention | N/A | Omada – Intensive behavioral counseling (IBC) app shown to promote weight loss and reduce T2D incidence |
| Diabetes | mySugr – Auto-logs data via connected devices for blood glucose and activity tracking. Gamification of blood sugar control | BlueStar Diabetes – FDA-cleared app with 2 RCTs demonstrating efficacy |
| AF Screening and Dysrhythmias | N/A | Kardia – Works with FDA-cleared Kardia Mobile – a clinically validated mobile EKG solution |
| Hypertension | SmartBP – Manages blood pressure measurements and track progress | Twine – Collaborative Care – A collaborative care platform, designed to engage patients in all care team activities |
| Cardiac Rehab | N/A | Healarium (Mayo Clinic Instance) – Configurable health management app that can be loaded with content for specific conditions and individual patients |
| Cancer | OWise Breast Cancer – Helps individuals regain control during chaotic times of illness and treatment | MoovCare – Application that delivers surveys to cancer patients enabling targeted follow up |
| Asthma | AsthmaMD – Asthma management application. Asthma diary and visualize asthma activity on a color graph | Propeller Health – FDA cleared, CE marked technology that works with existing asthma and COPD inhalers |
| Medication Refills | Walgreens – Online pharmacy serving needs for prescriptions, health & wellness products and health information | Walgreens – Online pharmacy serving needs for prescriptions, health & wellness products and health information |
| Medication Management | Medisafe Meds & Pill Reminder – Personalized medication management including reminders, educational content, and biometrics | AiCure – Uses patented artificial intelligence (AI) on mobile devices to confirm medication ingestion. It reminds and monitors if you have not taken your medications with interactive visual and audio guidance that automatically adjust to your needs. |
Source: IQVIA AppScript Essentials, Aug 2017
Want to read more from the ADCES 2021 conference, including highlights on diabetes stigma, the latest in diabetes technology, and SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists? Check out our article from last week: “Newest Updates in Diabetes Care and Education from ADCES 2021”.