Healthy by App – Towards a Taxonomy of Mobile Health Applications

Smartphones and apps have become natural companions with personal access to all areas of life. Especially, health apps have the potential to change the healthcare system and support the health of individuals. Their possible uses range from educating users on various illnesses, to storing and analyzing health-related data. Over the past decade, such apps have gained substantial popularity and new digital solutions are regularly introduced. While mobile health applications continue to attract the interest of the IS community, we lack an understanding of the existing variety of applications. In this study, we contribute to closing this research gap by developing a taxonomy based on a review of 150 most-downloaded health-related applications and identify 5 archetypes by means of a cluster analysis. The developed taxonomy contributes to organize and describe the variety of mobile health applications and the clusters illustrate archetypical applications and highlight gaps for future research in this domain