Digital Health Metrics in 2013: Mobile Usage, Doctors, and Pregnancy Apps

MobiHealthNews has compiled a list of 51 digital health metrics in 2013. For a full list, visit here.

Some interesting stats and metrics:

95M Americans used mobile for health in 2013

• “As of 2013, 95 million Americans are using mobile phones as health tools or to find health information, according to Manhattan Research. That’s 27 percent more than 2012, when the number was 75 million.”
• This number seems pretty reasonable. Research estimates that 56% of American adults have a smartphone, meaning that a little more than half of all smartphone users have searched the internet for a health related query. I’ve certainly searched for home remedies before.

Seven in ten doctors have a self-tracking patient

• “Seventy percent of doctors report that at least one patient is sharing some form of health measurement data with them, according to a survey of 2,950 practicing physicians.”
• This number seems a little high to me – but given health trackers, diabetes and weight measurement devices, and other applications (including blood pressure and cholesterol trackers), this number might not be too far off. It does suggest that patients are more aware of their health and are more open to sharing their data with others.

InMedica predicts six times as many US telehealth patients by 2017

• “According to new data released by research firm InMedica, the American telehealth market is predicted to grow by 600 percent between 2012 and 2017. While there are currently 227,000 US telehealth patients, according to InMedica, that figure is forecast to reach up to 1.3 million patients in 2017. US telehealth revenues, meanwhile, will jump from $174.5 million last year to $707.9 million in 2017.”
• While telehealth still faces some regulatory challenges, the growth trajectory shows that consumers are opening up to the idea of a slightly less personal, personal doctor’s visit.

Report finds pregnancy apps more popular than fitness apps

• “According to ByteMobile, on average, 39 percent of mobile users who are using one or more mobile health applications are using a fitness app. Of all the mobile health related data traffic that operators facilitate, about 50 percent of it comes from personal fitness apps.Ÿ While fitness apps are generating more data, it seems that pregnancy related apps are actually more popular: On average, 47 percent of total subscribers using one or more mobile health application use a pregnancy related application, according to the report. Despite the popularity of these kinds of apps they don’t generate nearly as much data as fitness ones do:Ÿ Pregnancy monitoring applications generate only 9 percent of the total mobile health related data traffic on wireless networks.”
• This stat is surprising. It says that if there are 100 mobile users who use one or more health apps, 39 of them use a fitness app and 47 of them use a pregnancy related application. Although research shows that women install 40% more apps, spend 87% more than men, men used health and fitness apps 10% more than women. Now to be fair, if you look at the breakdown of ages using mobile health apps, data shows that Millennials (aged 25-43) engaged with their smartphones every hour in the day and used fitness and health apps twice as much as the average of other age groups. This data claims that in a gender split, women use health and fitness apps 200 percent more than men do. If I were to venture a guess at the percent of total subscribers using one or more mobile health apps who use a pregnancy related app, I’d guess it’s 25% at the highest. Luckily we’ll have some interviews and posts in the next few months on pregnancy apps to find out more.