National Information Board Phase 1

In November 2014, the UK’s National Information Board launched ‘Personalised Health and Care 2020’. The document committed NICE and PHE to develop a model to ‘kitemark’ apps to support increased uptake and use of effective apps by the health and care system.

It is estimated that there is approximately 100,000 health, wellbeing and medical apps and it is the second fastest growing sector on the major app stores. From this extensive volume of apps, only a small proportion of these apps have been independently assessed. There are some applications being developed that are of highly quality and have proven effective for health benefit, and in some cases equalling or even exceeding similar face to face interventions in terms of health outcomes. It is evident, however, that health and care app market is not working and there is little to assist the public and clinicians to identify high quality apps or to protect the public from those which are harmful. A study of smoking cessation apps by Abroms and colleagues (2013) showed that there is no connection between current measures of quality (for example ranking in iTunes) and the effectiveness of an application. The market is also indicating that there is no unique selling point for those developing high quality health and care apps providing proven health benefit.

The commitment in the NIB strategy was made to engender confidence of the health and care system in digital treatments and tools by “separating the wheat from the chaff” and providing a place for health and care professionals to find safe and effective apps to use and to promote to their patients and clients.

Objectives