ORCHA Published in The Lancet Digital Health

Despite recent policy recommendations advocating the use of health apps in routine clinical practice, they are rarely recommended to patients by healthcare professionals in practice.

To find out why, ORCHA conducted its first study of healthcare professionals’ views regarding digital health.

Conducting in-depth interviews followed by a quantitative survey with healthcare professionals, ORCHA discovered what is most important, of some importance and of limited influence to healthcare professionals when considering recommending a health app to patients.

We are absolutely delighted that this research has been published in The Lancet Digital Health. Our study into the role of healthcare providers in mHealth adoption aligns with ORCHA’s role as an industry leader in ensuring that digital health is accessible and able to be trusted by healthcare providers.

The results of our study suggest that healthcare providers were most concerned about digital health technologies having a stamp of approval from either the MHRA, NHS, or another accrediting body. The second most significant factor for healthcare professionals when considering recommending health apps to patients was that there are published studies to demonstrate their safety or effectiveness.

Based on this evidence, ORCHA’s study suggests that the clinical assurance, safety and effectiveness of health apps are some of the most significant concerns for healthcare providers with regards to recommending digital health technologies to patients.

In this sense, ORCHA’s work becomes even more important, as we provide digital health solutions to address the concerns of healthcare providers. ORCHA’s mission to improve digital health outcomes by facilitating trust in health apps is achieved through our robust, 160-point App Review process, which scores apps based on their Data Privacy, Clinical Assurance and User Experience.

To examine the full statistics of ORCHA’s study and to further understand how digital health organisations such as ORCHA have a substantial role in increasing mHealth adoption, please read the full article, published in The Lancet Digital Health: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(19)30025-1/fulltext

If you are a healthcare professional, we’d love for you to participate in the next stage of our research about the most important factors for healthcare providers when considering offering digital health technologies to patients. Simply fill in this survey before 7th June – it only takes five minutes!