More than 200 000 health apps are available on the Swedish market, but their potential to contribute to better health remains underutilised. To find out why, DigitalWell Arena recently presented a feasibility study highlighting the main challenges. At its core, the lack of a national framework to evaluate the quality of health apps creates barriers for users, manufacturers and the healthcare sector.
The insights from the feasibility study were summarised in a report with a number of recommendations. The most central are that an authority needs to be given overall responsibility for quality assurance of health apps and that a national framework with a clear set of requirements begins to be applied.
Want to encourage the use of existing frameworks
In anticipation of structural changes, customers, not least in the public sector, need to prioritise increasing knowledge about quality assurance. The new project run by DigitalWell Arena, Leap For Life and Linnaeus University focuses on just that.
A key aspect is to get public customers to apply existing quality frameworks. In the first instance, these are frameworks that can take a more holistic approach, such as the Nordic quality framework NordDEC and the international technical specification ISO/TS 82304-2:2021.
– Even without a national decision, these frameworks provide guidance for evaluating the safety and efficacy of health apps. By gathering insights from both the public sector and companies, the project creates knowledge that will help show the way forward for Sweden,” says Marie Granander, project manager at DigitalWell Arena.
Four public actors are participating in the project: Region Värmland, Karlstad Municipality, Arvika Municipality and the Academic Primary Care Centre in Region Stockholm. Based on their needs, a number of relevant health apps will be selected for screening according to the existing frameworks.
– The aim is to interpret how companies and the public sector perceive the relevance and scope of the frameworks. It is also about identifying whether there are different interpretations of the regulations, or other obstacles to the use of health apps,” says Marie Granander, project manager at DigitalWell Arena.
Currently, the quality of health apps is assessed by each municipality and region. This slows down the pace of implementation and creates unequal access to new solutions across the country. For the companies, the unclear requirements picture means high development costs, as each customer sets its own requirements.
Current model slows down implementation
Anders Åmberg is the IT and digitalisation manager for health and social care in Arvika municipality, which is at the forefront of implementing safety-enhancing technologies in some areas. However, when it comes to implementing health applications, quality issues limit the level of ambition.
– A national framework would make things much easier. Today, a great deal of responsibility is placed on each individual municipality. Arvika is a small municipality with limited resources, and the work involved in quality assurance of a health application means that we have to make a hard prioritisation of what we can take in.
Raising awareness through a seminar series
The project will organise several open seminars with the aim of raising awareness in the public sector about the possibilities of using common quality assurance frameworks. The long-term ambition is to lay the foundations of a community, where public actors can exchange experiences that will facilitate the evaluation and implementation of health apps.