The market penetration of smartphones continues to increase in Germany. According to the industry association BITKOM, 44 million Germans were already using Internet and app-enabled mobile devices in 2015; a population share of almost 54%.
The use of apps is no longer a question of age: 65% of 50-64 year olds already own a smartphone. It is therefore not surprising that smartphone apps focusing on health, fitness or medical care are now very popular, such as Runtastic or Freeletics. According to a brand new study by Deloitte, only 2 percent of German athletes who own a smartphone do not use a fitness app at all. Unfortunately, this study does not include health and nutrition apps (n=171; DSSV Industry Newsletter 05/15). 
Unfortunately, there is little information on key metrics - such as the percentage of the population already using health apps - and the reasons for adoption/non-adoption and drop-out. This is the focus of a new comprehensive US study from the New York University School of Medicine by Paul Krebs and Dustin T. Duncan: "Health App Use Among US Mobile Phone Owners: A National Survey". Even more interesting are the results of this study, because the United States is about three to five years ahead of Germany when it comes to digitalization. So let's take a look into the crystal ball...
Health apps in the USA
In fact, the USA is already much further ahead than us in terms of smartphone use: Nearly 64% of the population and already 82% of 18-49 year olds use smartphones. In addition, 15% of the US population own a wearable device connected to their smartphone, such as a Fitbit (training tracker/wristband) or a smartwatch.
Study design
A cross-sectional study of 1604 smartphone users in the United States was conducted in June 2015: Participants were 18 years or older, spoke English, owned a smartphone and were equally divided between men and women. 60 percent had an annual income of less than 50,000 dollars. The participants' health status was also recorded: 34 percent had a "normal" BMI (18.5-24.9), but 62 percent were overweight (BMI 25-29.9; 27%) or even obese (BMI ≥30; 35%). Of those surveyed, 51% stated that they were very or even exceptionally healthy. The most common diagnoses (by self-report) were: High blood pressure (22.7%), high cholesterol (19.9%), depression (16.7%), obesity (12.3%) and diabetes (10.2%).
Use of health and fitness apps
With regard to the use of health apps, 58.2% of respondents had downloaded an app on their smartphone to record their health history; 41.6% had even downloaded more than five health-related apps. All programs listed in the app stores under the headings "Health and fitness" and "Medical apps" were taken into account. The most common reasons respondents gave for why they had downloaded apps were: to track how much physical activity they had done (52.8%), to track how much they were eating (47.6%), to lose weight (46.8%) and to learn exercises (34.0%).
The majority of respondents (65.5%) access their health app at least once a day and 44.4% use their apps for between 1 and 10 minutes. Confidence in the security (78.2%) and quality (81.3%) of the data collected is fairly high.
Reasons for non-use or discontinued use
In general, data protection plays a much smaller role in the United States than in Germany. Nevertheless, 21.8% of respondents refrained from installing health apps due to privacy concerns. Other reasons were: general lack of interest (27%), high costs (23%) or the conviction that they did not need a health app (10.9%).
A large proportion of respondents stated that they had downloaded health apps onto their smartphone that they no longer used. The main reasons for this were: It takes too much time to enter the data (44.5%), you lose interest (40.5%), the user interface is confusing (32.8%) or you don't like that the app transmits data to friends (29%).
Do apps improve health?
The vast majority (60.3%) of participants reported only a slight improvement in health. However, almost a third claim to have benefited greatly from the apps and only 10.5% have noticed no improvement or even a deterioration in their health.
What apps should do
The majority of critical comments address the relationship between food intake, physical activity and weight management. The apps should offer more specific and personalized recommendations in terms of training/activities and nutrition. In this context, motivation plays an important role: apps should point out that exercise is absolutely necessary. In addition, it is expected that users will be able to communicate directly with their doctor to make appointments or discuss the data recorded by the apps. According to the study, the willingness to collect and share personal data could be an important issue for future healthcare policy. Nevertheless, there are also massive concerns in the USA about the use of this data by insurance companies.
Opportunities for the fitness industry
There is no doubt that the use of health apps will increase in Europe. The biggest challenge is to develop apps that are accepted by large sections of society. The US study shows that people with higher incomes and higher education are more likely to use health apps. Therefore, more needs to be done to increase user-friendliness and solve data protection issues in order to reach broader sections of the population. The fitness industry can also benefit from the increasing use of health apps, not least because the data collected enables greater personalization of training and therapy. This means great opportunities for further growth by improving the consumer experience.
Source: Body Life
Image source: Alexey Boldin/shutterstock
Published on: 18 December 2015