Our recent post on ‘the last mile’ for medical apps in the US is a great introduction to some work I have been doing over the past three months: attempting to answer the question of how best to improve the perception by clinicians and patients of the efficacy of health-related apps. This work has been done for the i-Focus project, part of the Technology Strategy Board’s dallas programme.

As the research is quite detailed, and as I’m keen to get as much feedback as possible, I have split the work into three parts, to be delivered over the week – comments to this article or a direct email to me (on charles.lowe@btinternet.com) on errors, omissions or additions would be hugely gratefully received.

This post aims to answer the question of what regulations affect the development, sale and usage of health-related apps and, in particular, when an app is a medical device. (more…)