From Period Calendars To Mental Health Aids: Are Apps Making Doctors Irrelevant?

With over 165,000 health-related apps on Apple's App Store, having your very own doc-in-your-pocket has become the new normal for millions of mobile users worldwide. But it wasn't long ago that researching your symptoms required finding a giant medical book in the library, or calling up the distant-family-member-who-maybe-once-considered-studying-medicine or, dare I say it, visiting an actual doctor. To trim your waist you had to go to a brick-and-mortar gym, sign up for an aqua aerobics class, or purchase a Weight Watchers cookbook. And if you wanted to keep track of your periods you had to draw little inconspicuous hearts or flowers or the letter "P" on every 28th page of your diary. This was some FBI-level concealment.

Then came WebMD in 1996—not the first but definitely the most popular digital health resource—and with it the coining of the term "cyberchondriac" (a person prone to self-diagnosis via the internet). Everyone and their aunt began discovering their rare form of cancer from the comfort of the living room, typing search phrases like "weird lump in neck when lying down" or "diseases that come from no condom for one second." Online self-diagnosis became normalized—a means for discovering just how abnormal that rash really is—as opposed to seeking direct help from a GP or medical professional.

In 2008, Apple launched the App Store, and health and medical-related apps proliferated at an exponential rate, with calorie counters, pedometers, yoga teachers, period trackers, hearing tests, mindfulness coaching, and workout routines among the most downloaded apps. Once we all became too lazy to check our phones, the wearable market boomed—just like a version 2.0 of the LIVESTRONG fad, with bracelets that could actually measure stuff like heart rate and number of floors climbed. Fitbit, the most popular wearable device, recorded sales of over 20 million units from its launch up to 2015—even President Obama owns one.

Some of the most popular health apps out there are fertility trackers. These apps track the ovulation window when you are most likely to fall pregnant, with users tracking information about the physiological signs like basal body temperature and cervical discharge. They don't just claim to help women conceive; many are also targeting people who want to keep on top of their periods.

"Women want to know what's out there so that they can make informed decisions, and getting personalized information and community support is a great way to do that," explains Jen Tye, the head of US operations for popular fertility tracker Glow. "There's also a community in our apps where users can discuss taboo topics like abortion, birth control, and sex positivity—even their own relationships and sex lives." But Tye stresses that Glow is not a form of contraception: "[If] we can provide safe and informative information for women at many different ages, we think we think we're fulfilling our mission."

At the simplest level, these apps and device have become a quick and empowering way for us to cheaply access data and information about our own bodies. They enable us to feel like we have control and knowledge about something that may belong to us, but that we can sometimes feel utterly bewildered by. And this is particularly important for people who don't have access—due to wealth, disability, geographical location, or any number of reasons—to doctors, medicine, trainers, therapists, gynecologists, or dieticians.

But just as this diagnostic material has proliferated online and via apps, it's quickly becomes apparent that the accuracy of a face-to-face interaction can never be matched in the world of online self-diagnosis. In fact, misdiagnosis is a common quandary, as Manchester-based GP Dr Mat Owen recounts: "I recently was dealing with a patient who had a stomach issue, but I noticed that she had an unusual looking mole on her leg. She told me that a few months before she had used a 'mole app' which scanned the mole using a phone and sent you a report back on it. She had been told in her report that it was harmless. I referred her urgently as it looked suspicious to me, and it was actually a malignant melanoma, which is an aggressive form of skin cancer."

Indeed, a 2015 study in the British Medical Journal found that in a test of 23 symptom-checker applications, the first diagnosis given was only correct 34 percent of the time. And at the other end of the spectrum, the surge in health apps has created cyberchondria—a distinctly modern term which describes the medical anxiety induced when the Googling of symptoms produces terrifying diagnoses, a.k.a. falling down the brain-tumor rabbit hole. As Sophie, a self-confessed hypochondriac, explains, "I once had a cyst in my breast and I convinced myself that it was breast cancer by reading the forums. I was so anxious about checking my armpits for swelling, a symptom that I had read about online, that they actually swelled up from my prodding and anxiety. I was too scared to go to the doctor but when I finally did she ran tests and there was nothing to worry about."

Leaving the pitfalls of self-diagnosis aside, many health apps have proven that phenomenal things can happen when individuals are empowered by technology, particularly when it comes to dealing with a pre-existing condition at home. Take Nightscout, an app that can be downloaded onto a smart device that constantly tracks the blood sugar level of children with Type 1 Diabetes, without their parents having to be in the same place as their child. James Wedding, president of the Nighscout Foundation, explains just how revolutionary the software is: "Ask any kid about being able to go on a trip without their parents tagging along. Ask any couple about going out and leaving a kid safely monitored at home. Nightscout gives people the ability to keep an eye on diabetes without it being the focus of their lives."

Other health-related apps focus on prevention, on nudging us into eating more greens and sitting down for less. The gamification of health is being touted as one of the key ways we might battle obesity, insomnia, or stress. These are health and gaming hybrids like Zombies, Run!, which encourages speed when jogging so that you avoid being eaten alive by zombies, and apps that give financial incentives when users remember to take the right medication. So now you can make cash by remembering to take the Pill. Clearly this feels like a step in the right direction—after all, Pokémon Go was certainly getting people out the house, even if it did make some of them walk straight off cliffs.

"Health apps that deal with mental health are probably the most useful," says Dr. Owen. "I would always recommend you speak to your GP regarding problems you are having, but apps like Headspace help you develop your own coping strategies and give good and long-term effects." We've moved on miles from the days of Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo DS, with apps like Sleepio, a cognitive behavioral therapy tool designed to improve sleep management, especially for those who are suffering from insomnia, or Wizard, an app developed by the University of Cambridge to help people with schizophrenia to improve cognition and memory.

"I've had patients inform me that apps that chart ovulation have helped them conceive and I cannot argue with that, but health apps and websites should be seen as an adjunct to a consultation and not as an alternative," says Dr. Owen. And it does seem that even though some apps like Push Doctor and Dr. Now are pioneering face-to-face consultation via virtual consultation. But when it comes to precise and accurate treatment, visiting a professional is your best bet. Apps that gently nudge us towards better health and monitor pre-existing conditions are a brilliant tool, but nothing beats having a real, flesh-and-bone doctor to check out that flesh and bone and send you on your way.

This article was brought to you by the #NewNormal and was created independently from Broadly's editorial staff. The #NewNormal is O2's mission to question, explore and understand how mobile is changing the way we act and interact as humans.