As always, when a new year begins, companies start to evaluate what happened in the previous year, especially when it comes to the ‘best of’ series, and none are so much fun as looking at the top ranking apps for the year. Nobody wants to clutter their devices with unnecessary apps that they will never use and nobody wants to spend their precious time weeding through a bunch of apps to find the best ones. HealthTap understands this, and when it comes to healthcare apps that help connect patients and doctors, via our mobile devices and PCs, they will help you ‘weed’ your ‘app garden.’ Their AppRx Report will spell out the best health and medical apps for 2014 based on more than 65,000 top US doctors in their network. This will be done by showing us the top 100 health apps and then further breaking it down to 30 specific health categories. It is the only report of its kind that bases their findings on professional recommendations.
Apps and mobile devices are playing a much larger role in our lives than just a couple of years ago. Devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S5 really started the ball rolling by including a Heart Rate Sensor and now with the new wearables – fitness bands and smartwatches that monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, calories burned, steps taken and so much more – doctors and patients are wondering which apps are the best in this, the fastest growing category. HealthTap Founder & CEO Ron Gutman said with the more than 100,000 health apps in the App Store and Google Play Store, finding the right app can be a real chore. He said:
“On HealthTap, we regularly survey the millions of people who come to us looking for trusted health information, including on what new ways doctors can be helpful to them. We’ve received a significant amount of feedback from our users, telling us that they’re confused by the deluge of app choices available to them. Doctors too told us they’d like to learn which apps their peers recommended. In response to these requests we decided to bring together the best doctors in the U.S. from our network and beyond to help organize and identify the best apps available today to both consumers and doctors.”
HealthTap first worked with doctors to identify which apps were useful for them in their practices and also which ones were more suitable for their patients. To further organize these apps, HealthTap arranged them into 30 useful categories. Even properly categorized, finding the proper app can remain a challenge, especially going off the personal reviews, and they felt that recommendations from the actual doctors would go a long way to help evaluate just how effective an app actually performs. Therefore, HeathTap invited all verified US doctors to recommend apps based on their experience using the apps – even recommending them to their patients for feedback. Their AppRX Report is the accumulations of their findings for the best app for each category.
These reports are not only good for the many doctors and app purchasers, but also for the app developers as it guides them in the right direction to let them know what is working and what apps need improved. Some of the findings for Android’s best apps – the overall highest ranked app is ‘First Aid – American Red Cross.’ The highest ranking app for Children’s Health is ‘My Baby Today – BabyCenter’ and the number one app in the Healthy Eating category is ‘Fooducate.’ If you have diabetes, then in that category, one of the highest rated is ‘Glucose Buddy.’ If you want an app in the Pregnancy and Fertility category, the highest rated is ‘BabyBump Pregancy.’
The top twenty Android Apps are: 1. Weight Watchers Mobile – 2. White Noise Lite – 3. Lose It! – 4. First Aid – American Red Cross – 5. RunKeeper – GPS Track Run Walk – 6. Emergency First Aid/Treatment – 7. Instant Heart Rate – 8. Fooducate – Healthy Food Diet – 9. Glucose Buddy : Diabetes Log – 10. Pocket First Aid & CPR -11. Fitbit – 12. Runtastic Pedometer (All Versions) -13. Drugs.com Medication Guide -14. BabyBump Pregnancy Free – 15. Eat This, Not That! Restaurant – 16. Nike+ Running -17. GoodRx – 18. My Baby Today – 19. Relax and Rest Meditations – 20. Fitness Buddy: 1700 Exercises. The top winners by category are:
Please hit us up on our Google+ Page and let us know what your favorite apps are for these categories or if you use any of these recommended apps already on your mobile device…as always, we would love to hear from you.