News Feature | January 22, 2015

Research Reveals What Makes A Winning Healthcare App

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Research Reveals What Makes A Winning Healthcare App

Research group, Arc 360 from Applause has released findings that IT solutions providers invested in health and healthcare apps will find useful in gauging app quality and market growth.

The report, The 2015 State of the U.S. Health & Fitness Apps Economy, will be useful to developers in building better healthcare apps through determining which current apps are comparatively superior, and in gaining a deeper understanding of how customers perceive Android and iOS app quality.

App Quality Scale

Applause surveyed the perception of quality sentiment of Android and iOS users, and then asked them to rank apps using the following ratings:

  • Poor: Customers are disappointed
  • Fair: Customers tolerate the apps because they are useful
  • Good: Customers like the app
  • Excellent: Customers love the app
  • Winning: Customers applaud the apps

The Results

Elite status was achieved by four, highly popular apps. Those were Calorie Counter by MyFitnessPal, Lose It! By FitNow, MapMyRun by MapMyFitness, and RunKeeper by Fitness-Keeper. Each of the four apps received score of more than 70.

Three apps on the Android platform received scores of 80 or higher across more than 20 thousand reviews: Period Calendar/Tracker by ABISHKKING, Period Tracker by GP Apps, and Calorie Counter by MyFitnessPal.

Five apps on the iOS platform received scores of 80 or higher, across more than 20 thousand reviews: Calorie Counter by MyFitnessPal, LoseIt! By Fit-Now, Sleep Cycle alarm clock by Northcube AB, MapMyRun by MapMy Fitness and MapMyWalk by MapMyFitness.

Recommendations

The survey also includes recommendations for brands whose apps came in at different ratings levels … advice even developers of new apps will find useful as they work to create offerings that connect with an ever-changing health and fitness user community.

  • Brands with apps that were rated as poor should focus on creating apps that work "every time, for everyone, across every device, OS, network, and location."
  • Brands with apps that were rated as fair should engage in more real-world testing in environments where users naturally interact with digital experiences.
  • Brands with apps that were rated as good should push their apps beyond just working. They should focus on an intuitive experience that's stable, secure, and high performance.
  • Brands with apps that were rated as excellent should rope users in on new builds to identify issues before customers do.
  • Brands with apps rated as winning should focus on continuous user feedback if the want to improve overtime.

Going Deeper

The full report can be accessed here. To learn more about reasons mobile apps aren't successful, please read the article, Survey Reveals Why Mobile Apps Fail.