Will an App a Day Keep the Doctor Away?

Abstract

Will an app a day keep the doctor away? In principle, the answer to this question should be no. However, with mobile health applications (applications developed on mobile devices to collect, store, and share health information) quickly proliferating on digital platforms, the answer to this question must be nuanced to account for the increasing variety of existing smartphone tools available to the public. Indeed, there are at least 100,000 of them currently in circulation, giving millions of consumers easy access to health information, symptom management tools, and diagnostic predictions. In 2025, the overall digital health market is expected to exceed 500 billion dollars in revenue. In Canada, there is a lack of thorough ethical guidance on the use of mobile health applications, leaving users without any standards by which to distinguish effective applications from marketing hype. This is why I believe they have become the most pressing and timely challenge in Canadian healthcare ethics today.