Trends 2016 – The Health & Fitness Mobile App Boom
A friend of mine busted out her iPhone last weekend at Olive Garden and started tip-tapping away in the middle of our salad and breadsticks. When I asked her hat’s up she e plai ed ho she’s religiousl ee usi g MyFitnessPal for over t o ears a d s ears she’s lost o er 4 l s. ith its robust calorie documentation process.
The amount of trust I saw placed in that app and in many others like Fitbit is causing the app market to change phenomenally.
Using a health and fitness mobile app is now shown to be preferred to actually going to a physician by 66% of the US population. As part of this trend, health and fitness mobile apps are tracked as being the top 3rd most impactful mobile trend in 2016.
So hat are people a tuall doi g ith these apps? Well‌
WHAT USERS DO WITH THESE APPS What users do with these apps
Tracking diet
47%
Medication notifications
46%
Symptom tracking
45%
Tracking physical activity
44% 0%
5%
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
So it looks like these apps are making millions of lives easier and better overall. But this gro th did ’t o e out of o here. We a t to k o h this parti ular section of the app market is booming so much in 2016.
Why so much growth? With 8,000+ apps in the health and fitness category, the stiff competition between these apps have forced the providers to consistently improve their service.
The competition has gotten so rough that the average rating score on app stores for the most popular health and fitness apps is excellent across the board.
Thanks to an ARC study, we were able to dive deeper than this, and really find out what it is about these mobile apps that get these great reviews. Here’s hat the fou d1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
Intuitive and simple user-interface Elegant and smooth transition animations Highly accurate information Large databases for tracking purposes A fun and uplifting user experience
But what does this trend mean? Although physicians can obviously never truly be replaced, there are mentions in multiple studies that foretell physicians being left behind with this new wave of mobile apps and wearables . Sure, this is a bit over sensationalized, but there is some truth to it. By this I mean, physicians can use this massive growth to their advantage and get their names out there.
Mobile app development can be done hand in hand with the physicians the sel es hi h a i rease the app’s redi ilit hile also leadi g to good branding opportunities.
What could be left behind, though, are the apps that refuse to innovate and meet the demands of an explosively growing market. Right now, mobile app development is surging in large pharma companies that
seek to educate users on drugs and foods they ingest, which offers all kinds of opportunities to physicians to influence their future.
With this mobile app trend really becoming a part of our lives just now i 6, it’s the perfe t ti e to i trodu e our o health a d fit ess app. If you’re onsidering uilding one for your rand, let’s talk.