Protecting patient privacy, the threat of misdiagnosis, a lack of physician involvement and missing medical data are four reasons one physician won't be writing a script for a medical app anytime in the future.
Kevin Pho, M.D., a primary care physician in Nashua, N.H. cites those concerns, as well as the need for more federal oversight, as why he believes medical apps are not yet a valuable treatment option. "Despite the promise of these apps, I'm not ready to recommend them to my patients," he writes in a blog for USA Today, noting that there are more than 40,000 apps categorized as "health and fitness" or "medical" in Apple's app store alone. "But how many are actually useful?" he questions. "The Food and Drug Administration is trying to get a handle on the effectiveness and safety of these apps," he says, adding "but this, obviously, leaves tens of thousands of other medical apps unregulated, which should raise some safety concerns." Article