Most healthcare apps do not meet NHS criteria

The failings include poor information, lack of security updates and insufficient awareness of regulatory requirements

A firm which reviews healthcare apps for several National Health Service (NHS) trusts says 80% of them do not meet its standards.

The failings include poor information, lack of security updates and insufficient awareness of regulatory requirements, said Orcha chief executive Liz Ashall-Payne.

The firm’s reviews help determine if an app should be recommended by NHS staff.

Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (Orcha) says there are about 370,000 health-related apps available online.

App developers can categorise their apps themselves and the ones reviewed by the firm include those tagged health, fitness and medical.

Orcha says one of the criteria on which many apps fail is regulation, although this can be unintentional, if developers don’t realise what is required.

Innovators can get a bad reputation and that can be unfair, says Liz Ashall-Payne.

She says, imagine if you have experienced a challenge with your health or that a loved one and you just want to help others. You’re coming at it with good intentions but you wouldn’t necessarily know which regulation your product needs.

And it is not necessarily straightforward.

Any app which offers to calculate medicine doses or timings, or diagnose injury or conditions is defined as a medical device. They require a CE quality mark, according to the government regulator the MHRA.

However, depending on the service offered, the app’s developer needs to contact a national regulator even if an app does not fall into that category. These regulators include the Care Quality Commission (England), Healthcare Inspectorate (Wales), Healthcare Improvement (Scotland), or the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (Northern Ireland).

For example, an app offering access to a virtual doctor would need to be registered with the CQC in England, but AI or machine learning elements would not fall under its remit.

As a healthcare professional, you just want to get good health apps to your patients, said Ms Ashall-Payne, a former NHS speech and language therapist. But it’s difficult to know which tools to recommend.

The NHS also has its own public-facing app library, containing apps vetted by its digital team NHSX, which carried out some work with Orcha.