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 than face:face. The principal reason given for this is that patients can often review and repeat online-delivered content.

Meanwhile, those following the Mole Detective story we broke in February will be pleased to note that it has disappeared from Google Play. The MHRA are understandably unable to comment, however it looks to be a first success for their app investigators. The message this editor takes from the experience is that it really is worth alerting the MHRA if you have a concern about a specific app.

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