Mobile-based health monitoring: 4 benefits and 4 drawbacks

Over the past few years, especially with the rise in chronic diseases and lack of knowledge about basic health parameters, smartphone users have started to rely on multiple health monitoring applications. These health and wellness apps help you in almost all aspects of your well-being. You can also track your daily steps, calculate the calories of all the items you have consumed, and even remind yourself to take a glass of water whenever necessary.

But with so many applications, you may be concerned about data privacy and the impact of conflicting information amongst different apps. Most of these apps also encourage you to buy other fitness trackers and come with various paid subscriptions.

Let us take a look at some of these apps' main advantages and disadvantages so that you can decide before installing or subscribing to a free or paid health monitoring application.

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Advantages of health monitoring apps

1) Ease of use

Most people use a smartphone these days, and through basic smartphone sensors, you can easily calculate all the essential health parameters. Most of these health monitoring applications are free to download, and you can even set custom reminders to perform a specific exercise or task. All these perks are available in the palm of your hand thanks to your smartphone, without you having to worry about anything.

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2) Calorie counting

To keep track of all the food items you have consumed or are planning to consume, most health apps come with a calorie counter these days. This feature helps you monitor your calories and maintain a calorie deficit if you are on a low-carb diet. Overall, these health monitoring apps help keep track of all the calories burnt or consumed to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

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3) Educating you about all the health benefits

Most health monitoring applications can inform and educate their user base while also identifying doctors' prescriptions and suggesting basic medicines. You can also access medical publications and other information to stay well-informed and educated on taking care of your health.

Also, many of us would love to exercise in the comfort of our homes but don’t know how to perform basic home workouts. Popular health apps come with various workout routines and methods you can follow to maintain your body shape. These exercises are easy to follow and can be performed by novices too.

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4) Keeping track of your body vitals

Different types of sensors in a smartwatch (Image via TAGG)

With the rise in popularity of cutting-edge digital devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and healthy lifestyle apps, you can now easily maintain a healthy weight, adhere to a strict diet, or get a better night's sleep. These health monitoring apps let you monitor your sleep, body mass, calorie consumption, heart rate, and blood pressure, and even remind female users of their menstrual cycles.

Such information will increase the likelihood of your achieving the healthy lifestyle you desire by helping you set safe and appropriate workout objectives. You can even share your statistics with friends or personal trainers to get additional guidance and assistance.

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Drawbacks of health monitoring apps

1) Accuracy of the information provided

Suppose you want to natively track health vitals with any third-party or proprietary fitness tracker support. Many such health monitoring apps use different methods to calculate various body vitals. For instance, some applications use a sensor underneath the phone's camera to forecast your heart rate and stress levels.

Many such apps also assert that they can measure blood pressure using a phone's screen, camera, or flashlight. Unfortunately, most of the information supplied is untested and unreliable, and if we compare them with actual medical equipment, then these are indeed well off the mark. Hence, these apps’ accuracy can’t be trusted for such vital body readings.

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2) Data privacy

Of late, several studies and government authorizations have raised concerns about health monitoring and data privacy breach issues in such apps. Most of these apps collect your data, including birth dates, email addresses, and health data.

Only a few of them include privacy policies that usually outline the purposes of data collection, sharing, and sale to third parties. Also, some studies have discovered that premium applications do not rely on advertising for funding, so they represent less of a privacy risk to users.

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3) Subscription cost

The subscription cost of health monitoring apps (Image via Root info solutions)

As stated earlier, most apps are free to download and work without any installation payment. But once you access all the premium features of top-rated and reliable health apps, the developers charge a certain subscription fee to access all the features of their app.

If the app has a large user base, it also relies on video or photo advertisements between several functionalities, which is sometimes quite irritating. So, for budget-conscious users, this might feel like a big con as they have to maintain their fixed expenditures all the time.

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4) Reliability of data

Reliability of the data in the health monitoring apps (Image via topflight)

Consumers cannot determine the reliability of the data offered on health monitoring apps or other mobile technology apps because there are no industrywide standards in place. Thus, the majority of physicians also advise against relying solely on these apps to provide you with helpful answers for your health. Hence, you must not fully trust the guide or coaching manuals in these apps.

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While using mobile health applications, you should exercise caution and common sense. While you should ideally be informed of all the app's capabilities and the intended health advantages, it would be best if you examine any available privacy policies yourself to comprehend how the software handles data.