Original Article An Empirical Review of the Top 500 Medical Apps in a European Android Market

Background/Aims: Mobile phone apps are increasingly playing a role in healthcare delivery and the training of healthcare professionals. According to Research2guidiance, the market for such medical apps reached US$718 million in 2011. The market for mobile applications for Apple and Google dominate the app scene, as they contain over 500,000 apps each. This research reviews the 500 top medical apps in a specific Android market as it seeks to explore the availability, popularity, and prices of apps designed for different medical specialties and uses. Methods: The Android market was chosen because it provides better download statistics and its unregulated nature is a good indicator for good and bad apps. The Italian Android market was chosen as it approximates a closed healthcare market. Results: The results show that apps designed for public education, to be used as health diaries, or for healthcare practitioners to make calculations were the most popular. While mean number of downloads for the 500 apps was 74,471, the median is closer to 3,000 downloads per app, reflecting how a few popular apps have skewed the mean. The median number of reviews for each app was 16, the median rating was 4.1/5 and the data shows most apps (77%) are free. Conclusion: This review of the top, consecutive 500 ‘medical ’ apps in the Italian Android market show