An article in the LA Times reports that some doctors are expressing concern about the reliability of the information provided by some of the almost 6,000 health-related smartphone applications that are available.  They are also concerned that a consumer might follow an app's guidance and not visit his physician when he should, for example, monitoring his own blood pressure himself instead of having it checked by his physician.  Presently, there is not much vetting of a health-related app.  As Dr. Joseph Kim, a physician and founder of medicalsmartphones.com, said "Type 'diabetes' into an app-store search engine, you can find a huge list of apps, but you have no way of knowing which ones are good and which you should avoid"...  He recommends consulting a healthcare professional that you trust about any apps that you are considering adding to your smartphone.  Choosing an app is akin to deciding whether or not a health-related Internet resource is reputable or not.  In my Medical Resources on the Internet class, I list 5 factors to consider in evaluating a website:  accuracy, authority, objectivity, coverage, and currency.  Likewise, when choosing an app, you want to know who produced the app (accuracy and authority), whether or not there is any bias that might affect how and what information is available (objectivity), whether or not the information is fairly comprehensive (coverage), and how up-to-date the information is (currency).  For example, the University of Maryland Medical Center, produced a medical encyclopedia app for the iPhone, which I recommended in a previous blog .   It passes the 5 factor test.  

Another way to check the reliability of a health-related app, as the LA Times article states, is to check for to see if anyone has written a review on it, but be aware of who is writing the review - is it a doctor or another health professional, an unbiased user, or the producer of the app.  The article links to a Consumer Reports article that lists a few dozen health apps that it considers reliable.  The author of the LA Times article also lists a few apps that she has tried and likes.  Among them are: American Heart Association's Pocket First Aid and CPR (available for iPhone, Android) Lose It! (calorie tracker; iPhone) iTriage (medical symptoms, locate nearby hospitals; iPhone, Android, Blackberry).  

As anyone with a smartphone knows, the applications market is an exploding market.  The 6,000 health-related apps statistic came from a March 2010 mobilehealthnews review.  I am sure there are a lot more out there now, 5 months later, and this amount can only grow exponentially.  Many will be "junky", some will be very useful and reliable.  Let the downloader beware.