Mit Apps durch Dick und Dünn?

Zusammenfassung

Mobile Geräte und Apps sind heutzutage allgegenwärtig und spielen auch in den Bereichen Gesundheit und Medizin eine wichtige Rolle. Die Suche nach Apps für bestimmte Fragestellungen ist oft schwierig. Abhängig vom betrachteten Store stehen teils nur eingeschränkte Suchmöglichkeiten zur Verfügung. Zur Klärung, ob für das Gebiet „Adipositas” typische Stichworte zu adäquaten Resultaten führen, wurde exemplarisch der für die iOS-Plattform verfügbare App-Store evaluiert. Initial wurde dessen Suchfunktion ohne Beschränkung auf bestimmte Kategorien für 31 Stichworte (17 deutsch, 14 englisch) des Bereichs „Adipositas” angewendet und aus den Ergebnissen die vier am häufigsten zugeordneten Store-Kategorien identifiziert: „Medizin”, „Gesundheit & Fitness”, „Essen & Trinken” sowie „Lifestyle”. Der zweite Suchlauf beschränkte sich auf die vorgenannten Kategorien. Viele Begriffe ergaben Treffer in mehreren davon; „Gesundheit & Fitness” führte mit Abstand. Apps, denen die Hersteller über die primäre Kategorie „Medizin” einen scheinbaren medizinischen Nutzen zugewiesen hatten, waren in der Minderzahl. Die Store-Beschreibungen gaben kaum Hinweise auf verwendete Informationsquellen, verfügbare Evidenz o.ä. und es wurden keine Apps mit Zulassung bzw. Zertifizierung als Medizinprodukt identifiziert. Für Nutzer bleibt die Suche nach sinnvollen Apps durch das Informationsdefizit und unklare Kategorisierung schwierig und ein Ziel sollte sein, Tools zur Verfügung zu stellen, mit deren Hilfe sie sich selbst ein Urteil bilden können.

Summary

Nowadays, mobile devices and apps are omnipresent and they also play an important role within the areas of health and medicine. Finding apps that match specific issues is not an easy task. Depending on the store considered, available search methods are often limited. To determine whether keywords typically associated with the field of obesity lead to results adequately covering this field, an exemplary evaluation of the App-Store provided for the iOS platform was conducted. For an initial search, the search function was applied to 31 keywords (17 German, 14 English) with no further restrictions and the most frequently assigned categories of the resulting apps were noted: “medicine”, “health & fitness”, “food & drink”, “lifestyle”. The second run was limited to the four aforementioned categories. Most keywords were linked to matches in multiple of these categories, and “health and fitness” was assigned most frequently. Only a minority of apps was assigned by their developers to “medicine” as the primary category, presumably to denote a possible medical focus. Store descriptions rarely gave an indication of information sources that were used or available evidence and we were unable to identify any app that had received approval or undergone certification processes as a medical device. This lack of information, in combination with the often unclear categorization used for the apps, renders the identification of useful apps very difficult for users. Future efforts by developers and store providers should aim at offering tools for users enabling them to better evaluate apps for mobile devices.

Schlüsselwörter

Mobile Apps - Adipositas - Gewichtsreduktion - Gewichtskontrolle - Suchfunktion

Keywords

Mobile apps - obesity - weight reduction - weight control - search function

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