What is the most important device in your home for your health? It’s not your treadmill, thigh master, or even your juicer. It’s your phone.
Smartphones are much more than just phones; they give us directions, recommend restaurants and, increasingly, are powerful tools to keep us healthy. Health apps are a large and fast growing area of app developments, and there are tens of thousands currently available.
Health apps can be sorted into three categories: Apps that help you track your activities and diet, apps that measure your vital signs and apps that connect you to your health care providers.
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Health apps connect doctors, patients
Apps that help you track your diet, weight and activity are widely available and many are free. Recording your daily weight and tracking your calories is a powerful way to stay motivated to lose weight. Many apps will display your weight and calories over time, and I can tell you from personal experience, watching your line dip from a starting weight and head toward a goal weight over time is gratifying. Not sure if you should have that maple bacon donut from the new hot donut spot? Just plug in the calories and see where it puts you for the day.
Now that phones have highly sophisticated sensors that know where you are, they’re a great way to track your workouts. Apps such as Everybody Walks will not only count your steps but also tell you how many calories you’ve burned. The best part though, is sharing. We know from behavioral research that we are better at sticking to resolutions and maintaining healthy habits when we share them with family and friends. When you realize that you’ve just walked 8,900 steps at the San Diego Zoo, what do you think you’ll do before posting that information to Facebook? If you’re like the most of us, you’ll take one more loop around the gorillas to make it 10,000 steps, then hit send. That kind of constant motivation has never before been possible.
What if you could actually track your heart rate, blood pressure or blood sugar using your phone? You can. There are apps that sync to your blood pressure cuff and automatically record your readings. Again, just seeing your numbers decrease over time is a powerful motivator and one that everyone with high blood pressure should take advantage of. Where it gets really interesting is when you can send health information to your doctor, like me. Kaiser Permanete’s KP app not only lets you see your lab results (which you can also watch trend in healthier or unhealthier directions) but also send a message directly from your phone to your physician.
Not sure which cream to put on that rash? Just pull my name up on your app and fire off the question to me conveniently and securely. You can also renew your prescription and request refills. What about sending information directly to your doctor? Apps are being developed in ways for you to send any health information you want to your doctor, such as a current study underway in San Diego where some of our patients are sending their blood sugar levels directly to us.
Apps help us to monitor and track our behaviors, motivating us and providing real-time feedback to help us stay on a healthy track. They also allow you to have unprecedented access to your health record and to share information that’s important to your health directly with your doctor. Take five minutes this week to check out some health apps for your phone. It just might extend your life.
Dr. Jeffrey Benabio is a board-certified dermatologist and Physician Director of Health Transformation at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. He blogs at www.thedermblog.com www.benabio.com
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