HSBH5003: E-health App Analysis for Health Professionals Report

This report provides an analysis of the Apple Health app, focusing on its use by health professionals and its impact on young adults. It begins by describing the app's target audience and objectives, which center on promoting physical activity through real-time data sharing from wearable devices. The report then explores the evidence base supporting the app's effectiveness, highlighting studies that link physical activity to improved health outcomes and the preference of young adults for mobile health applications. The analysis includes the strengths and limitations of the app, such as its monitoring capabilities and potential privacy concerns. A personal experience using the app is also evaluated, considering factors like data safety, user experience, and data integration. The report concludes by summarizing the app's utility in encouraging exercise among young adults, supported by the widespread use of health apps worldwide.

Running head: E-health for Health Professionals
E-health for Health Professionals
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Description of the Target audience and the objective of the App
The special App that has been chosen for this report is the Apple Health App, which gives fitness
data on the wearable apps. Since, the wearable devise is used mostly by the young adults. The
target audience for the App are the young adults (18-40) year.
The main objective of this App, is to encourage the young adults about physical
activities, by sharing real time data about the activities. The updated App provides the blood
glucose level, weight, heart rate as well as useful information about personal menstruation cycle.
Evidence base for the App and rationale for the aim
Many of the young adults are not achieving the health benefits of the physical activities.
Nowadays, most of the adults spent a sedentary lifestyle due an increased screen time and the
type of job. There is a strong evidence that adults that are physically active have lower risks for
mortality, high blood pressure, heart diseases and even some types of cancers. It has been found
by a study that the young adults often skip out their meals, or water consumption or time for
physical activity (Valle et al., 2015). Decreased physical activity has been related to an increased
rate of obesity and the associated health problems, including the development of cardiovascular
diseases. According to a study, devices like specialized apps are largely preferred by the younger
generation that will give them a remainder about the amount of physical exercises needed
regularly.
The contemporary youths spends a large amount of time finding, selecting and using the
mobile digital applications. Currently there are over 16000 health apps available on the major
App stores that focuses on aspects like wellness, diet and exercise. The health and wellness apps

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are of particular interest to the younger generation (Goodyear, Armour & Wood, 2019). This
intents has been generated in the generation probably by the use of social media. Among the
heath related apps, the younger generation is mostly inclined to the wearable apps. The fit bits
and fuel bands can be paired with health related apps for monitoring, tracking and recording the
heath related behaviours. These apps can be used to record the diet, sleep and in fact the water
intake (Depper, & Howe, 2017). This has also been supported by Mollee, Middelweerd, Kurvers
and Klein, (2017), where it has been stated that smartphones provide a large range of
technological possibilities, in addition to the e- health and m-health like telecommunication. It
has been stated by Litman et al., (2015), Apple health app also have features like feedback based
on the tracking of the user exercise activity, providing motivating feedbacks, often suggesting
the correct method of exercises, assisting the users to set up goals, including the incorporation of
social media. Moreover, it assists the users to reschedule their exercises. Most of the app might
help individuals to overcome specific limitations, tens to increase the self –efficacy of
consumers, making them to exercise with improved health outcomes (Cowan et al., 2013).
Analysis of the strengths and the weaknesses of the App
Monitoring and any-time any place support. Sensoring and monitoring can be done in a
varieties of ways and it stays unclear as to what extent the current level of physical activity app
uses the possibilities of technology foe assisting the users to be physically active. Using apps for
effecting the health behaviour can be explained by the theory of planned behaviour. According to
the theory, the behavioural intentions like exercising is generally driven by constructs like
attitude towards the behaviours, the perceived behavioural control and the subjective rules. The
behavioural control that is perceived is the capability of a user to perform a particular behaviour.
Use of apps can alter the user’s attitude towards exercising and eating and it and relieve the

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difficulties associated to the users engaging in exercises. The physical activity (PA) app has a
GPS tracking system for recording the physical activities like walking, cycling or jogging. The
app also records the duration, intensity and the frequency of the activities by the help of an
accelerometer and a gyroscope. This helps to calculate and estimate the expenditure and
summarize the performance trend overt time. One of the attractive features of this app is that it
allows the information to be shared with the friends and social media (Wang, Egelandsdal,
Amdam, Almli & Oostindjer, 2016). The apple health care also employs the same procedure for
obtaining and sharing the health care data.
Discussing about the limitations, it should be mentioned that according to an analysis
carried out by the IMS institute of Health care informatics , it has been found that about 16200
apps present in the Apple iTunes app store are directly linked with patient treatment and care. As
per the investigators, most of the other apps that can be installed provides no valid information
about health and in no way improves the health and wellbeing of the patients. It has been stated
that many of the health app developers are not including the behavioural strategies that are valid
and proven. There are certain ineffective weight loss apps that even harm the novice consumers
who does not know to be careful (Treacy & McCaffery, 2016). Many of the apps that can detect
cancer uses algorithms for determining the likelihood of cancer , while the other sends the
images of the lesions to a dermatologists for the assessments. It has been found that the most
accurate apps that uses algorithms are likely to give a wrong interpretation of the disease. Hence,
the biggest limitation of using a health care app. Hence, the main limitation of using a health care
app is the less reliability of the app data.
It has been stated by Adhikari, Richards and Scott (2014), that the threats to privacy from
the tele-health involves the breaching of confidentiality at the time of the collection and the

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transmission of sensitive data. Although, Apple being a renowned company, the chances of
security breaches are much less. Furthermore, the individuals might not be able to request copies
of information that has been collected by the tele-health apps. Patients and the consumers might
over rely on the consent forms that can result in weaker privacy protection.
Evaluation of personal experience of using the App
The evaluation of the app should be based on four levels such as – the data safety ad privacy, the
effectiveness of the apps, the experience of the user and data integration.
I have used this app personally, to track my everyday activities and it helps to schedule
my physical activity routine accordingly. The phone sync the data with the icloud, hence it is
encrypted at the time of the transit. Furthermore, the Health Kit is also designed to manage and
merge data from various sources. For example, the users can manage and view all their data in
the Health App, including the addition and the deletion of the data. The app has provisions to
change the goals and to increase or decrease the number of active calories, or provisions to
update everything. Additionally, there are various other apps that can be synced with Apple
Health (Apple Health App, 2020).
In conclusion, it can be said that Apple Health App is a useful tool to encourage the
young adults to practice exercises. There are now about 700 million iPhone health apps
worldwide, which proves that the consumers are happy and satisfied to use the health app.

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References
Adhikari, R., Richards, D., & Scott, K. (2014). Security and privacy issues related to the use of
mobile health apps. ACIS. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/8117
Apple Health App, (2020). A more personal Health app. For a more informed you. Access date:
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Cowan, L. T., Van Wagenen, S. A., Brown, B. A., Hedin, R. J., Seino-Stephan, Y., Hall, P. C., &
West, J. H. (2013). Apps of steel: are exercise apps providing consumers with realistic
expectations? A content analysis of exercise apps for presence of behavior change theory.
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Depper, A., & Howe, P. D. (2017). Are we fit yet? English adolescent girls’ experiences of
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2016.1196599
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https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1539011
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