v-Fluence Blog

Healthcare “Apps” Exploding in Mobile, Are You Ready?

Does your online monitoring cover new mobile app spaces? If so, you're seeing what we are: i-Tunes' Health & Fitness or Medical categories now contain more than 6,000 apps for iPhones. As of January 2010, there were more than 1,700 medical applications; all together, they've been downloaded by more than 1 million users.

Among these, there are hundreds of applications that reference virtually every major pharmaceutical brand name, offering services from basic prescribing data to "cost-saving" generic or over-the-counter alternative options. These have been developed by medical publishers, pharmacies, payers, hospitals, advocacy groups, alternative health promoters, health care professionals, litigators, government agencies and others. Virtually every therapeutic area is already represented with growing offerings for disease management. For example, Virginia Commonwealth University recently announced an application for physicians and patients to monitor daily asthma treatment routines.

Late to the game but starting to appear are apps from the pharmaceutical industry. When it comes to pharmaceutical company-branded apps, most are free of charge, while the costs of general healthcare-related apps for the iPhone range from free to $299. More specifically, 23 percent of all medical and health applications are available for free; the median price charged for the remaining 77 percent is $1.99.

Examples of major pharmaceutical companies with branded iPhone apps include:

With more than 6,000 already in the market via Apple's iTunes app store alone, the growth trends for health and medical applications is and will continue to be significant (see chart below).

New mobile phone applications in areas like disease management, medication tracking, drug recalls, health cost and record management are being released daily. With the recent addition of Google to the smart phone market, you can bet that new Android platform health applications will start rolling out at a faster pace in 2010.

While only a few major pharmaceutical companies currently appear as branded app developers in this space (see below), there are other examples of pharmaceutical company-sponsored or partnered apps that do not specifically carry company brand affiliations. This is in addition to hundreds of other therapeutic related apps are available for iPhones. These include: clinical trial, pharmacy, drug efficacy, OTC and alternative health product, diagnosis and treatment-related apps. . Additional health related apps include hospital information, health records, payer/insurance services and medical devices, among others.

Nearly every therapeutic area, treatment type and brand product is affected by the content and tools emerging in this mobile space, whether they're actively engaging in it or not.

This situation should have brand strategists asking such questions as: Are you appropriately monitoring these spaces and the dozens of third-party application review spaces? If your company has plans to launch a mobile app, have you determined how you plan to monitor and track user reviews and related content? How will you track and manage content that includes reportable adverse events and/or content that creates product promotion challenges and concerns among regulators who are currently tracking it?

Indeed, user reviews and comments posted to application pages and forums pose monitoring challenges for pharmaceutical and medical device companies, particularly as they relate to compliance for adverse event reporting and managing content that may be associated with tightly regulated product promotions. With that, each new space, from iTunes' iPhone app store to the various Android marketplaces online, have distinct policies for third-party comments (and removal of them), which are posted alongside application profiles that may give product marketers pause before bringing a branded application to market. Meanwhile, alternative product marketers and others with competing interests to regulated pharmaceuticals and medical devices are forging quickly ahead.

Additional iPhone and other mobile application audience implications to consider:

Physicians and Healthcare Professionals:

According a study released by Manhattan Research, more than half of U.S. physicians reported that they owned a PDA or smart phone in 2008, and that number is expected grow as more medical schools require PDAs in the classroom. According to Skyscape research, 80 percent of physicians say they are more likely to base a clinical decision on information they access via a Smartphone versus information they've read in a journal.

Patients & Caregivers:

Twenty-seven percent of all consumers currently use mobile devices for online activities, and more than 10 million Americans use cell phones or smart devices to look up health information. Current apps seek to help consumers manage prescriptions, validate prescriptions, promote alternative treatment options and offer price comparisons on prescriptions.

Parents could soon be using their iPhones to monitor a child's blood glucose levels throughout the day, whether that child is at school or at the beach.Of course, there are already dozens of iPhone apps available for tracking exercise, diet and blood pressure in which users input information to manage and track their health. But new tools, like one unveiled in March (2009) by J&J's LifeScan, will monitor health information remotely, then share it with family members or doctors.

Regulators:

Are iPhones with diagnostic apps medical devices? Maybe. At a February 2009 conference, Don Witters from the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health declared that the FDA has jurisdiction over any device that diagnoses, treats or prevents a disease. When asked about the surge of some types of applications, such as glucose meters to physician contact tools, Witters replied, "Well, I think the real answer is 'We don't know…'"

Regulators with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently held hearings on social and new media challenges, and updated policies and guidelines are expected sometime this year. It's unclear to what extend mobile apps will be addressed as part of this.

Supply Chain:

"There will be a huge boom for pharma manufacturing iPhone apps in the next few years," predicts Dean Calhoun, president/CEO of Affygility Solutions. Those for shop-floor training will be big, he thinks. "One of the largest web-conferencing providers already offers an app to watch webinars from the iPhone," he notes.

As always, there will be concerns about the use of handheld devices in hazardous environments that require rated equipment. iPhones or iPod Touches could be used in places where PC's are impractical, says Kyle Brinkman, a validation project engineer at King Pharmaceuticals, commenting on our LinkedIn.com community. "Consider places where lab methods, SOP's and batch records need to be but paper copies are not allowed (i.e., Documentum).

At v-Fluence, therapeutic-area dedicated analysts who are fully trained in drug safety reporting and promotional marketing restrictions and policies oversee the online monitoring of these and related spaces. Our senior counselors track tactics used by industry players and relevant influencers, while staying up to date with influential policies and practices for spaces like iTunes, Facebook, Twitter and other emerging spaces.

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