mobile health

The landscape of digital mental health apps: huge unmet needs, quality concerns, app stores asked to ensure transparency

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Address­ing the men­tal health cri­sis (Phar­ma Field):

Each day we find out more about the men­tal health effects of the pan­dem­ic. Ear­ly on, the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics found that one in five Britons report­ed symp­toms of depres­sion, com­pared with one in 10 before. And, accord­ing to a recent study led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion were all sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in par­tic­i­pants com­pared with ‘pop­u­la­tion norms’, with 64% of the par­tic­i­pants report­ing symp­toms of depres­sion and 57% report­ing symp­toms of anx­i­ety. [Read more…] about The land­scape of dig­i­tal men­tal health apps: huge unmet needs, qual­i­ty con­cerns, app stores asked to ensure transparency

The FDA creates new Digital Health unit to reimagine regulatory paths in the age of scalable, AI-enhanced innovation

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Med­i­cine Is Going Dig­i­tal. The FDA Is Rac­ing to Catch Up (Wired):

“WHEN BAKUL PATEL start­ed as a pol­i­cy advi­sor in the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion in 2008, he could pret­ty much pin­point when a prod­uct was going to land in front of the review­ers in his divi­sion. Back when med­ical devices were heavy on the hardware—your pace­mak­ers and your IUDs—it would take man­u­fac­tur­ers years to get them ready for reg­u­la­to­ry approval. FDA review­ers could keep up pret­ty well [Read more…] about The FDA cre­ates new Dig­i­tal Health unit to reimag­ine reg­u­la­to­ry paths in the age of scal­able, AI-enhanced innovation

Since more than 50% of people worldwide can’t access appropriate mental health treatments, let’s welcome (and test) mobile health apps

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mobilehealthMen­tal Health: There’s an App for That (Nature):

“Type ‘depres­sion’ into the Apple App Store and a list of at least a hun­dred pro­grams will pop up on the screen. There are apps that diag­nose depres­sion (Depres­sion Test), track moods (Opti­mism) and help peo­ple to “think more pos­i­tive” [Read more…] about Since more than 50% of peo­ple world­wide can’t access appro­pri­ate men­tal health treat­ments, let’s wel­come (and test) mobile health apps

Next: How to best civilize the mobile brain health and brain training Wild West (Tip: Consumer education may help more than pure regulation)

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GLASSES-AND-EYE-CHARTUC River­side Pro­fes­sor Slams Feds, Stands By His Health App (KQED):

“UC River­side pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy Aaron Seitz had an idea for a mobile health app based on his area of research.…Seitz is the aca­d­e­m­ic behind UltimEyes, the vision improve­ment app that got dinged by the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) for $150,000 last week for mak­ing decep­tive claims about the app’s effi­ca­cy. [Read more…] about Next: How to best civ­i­lize the mobile brain health and brain train­ing Wild West (Tip: Con­sumer edu­ca­tion may help more than pure regulation)

Expanding the brain health toolkit with mobile neurobehavioral tests — aka a “brain thermometer”?

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thermometersArmy touts ‘brain ther­mome­ter’ as front-line tool (Army Times):

“Army medics will soon use what’s been dubbed a “brain ther­mome­ter”: a mobile phone appli­ca­tion that can, with­in min­utes, pro­vide health pro­fes­sion­als data to help diag­nose and mea­sure a sol­dier’s injuries…

The Defense Auto­mat­ed Neu­robe­hav­ioral Assess­ment, pro­duced by Anthro­Tron­ix, includes [Read more…] about Expand­ing the brain health toolk­it with mobile neu­robe­hav­ioral tests — aka a “brain thermometer”?