All the sillier then that the VentureBeat article on the FTC action takes the tack that “The fine shows how difficult it will be for future mobile entrepreneurs to launch health apps that go beyond basic fitness and heart rate monitoring.” (more…)
NHS Apps Library embraces mental health…and Mole Detective vanishes
Thanks to Mike Clark for pointing this editor to the breaking news that the NHS Mental Health Apps Library has now gone live. It features online tools, resources and apps that they claim have a proven track record of effectiveness in improving mental health outcomes.
It is accessible through the NHS Choices platform, a website that gathers over 40 million visits per month, 9.7 million of which are to pages on depression; 6 million per month to stress and 9.4 million to anxiety.
This is likely to be a major benefit to those who have difficulty obtaining access to face:face mental health services, especially as a number of presentations in the Royal Society of Medicine have suggested that online mental health services can often be more effective (more…)
Action on bad apps in the US – not yet in the UK/EU
It is most encouraging to see that the FTC in the US has reached a settlement with two suppliers of “Melanoma Detection” apps: “In two separate cases, marketers of MelApp and Mole Detective have agreed to settlements that bar them from continuing to make such unsupported claims.” The FTC are pursuing actions against two other companies.
Echoing the requirements also of the EU’s Consumer Protection Directives as applied to health claims (notably the Misleading & Comparative Advertising Directive 2006/114EC), Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said: “Truth in advertising laws apply in the mobile marketplace.” “App developers and marketers must have scientific evidence to support any health or disease claims that they make for their apps.”
Sadly, despite a number of exposures of ‘bad apps’ that we have previously covered, as yet no action (more…)
Most Recent Comments