National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, P,O, box 1, Bilthoven 3720 BA, The Netherlands.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2013 Feb 11;13:23. doi: 10.1186/1472-6947-13-23.
Smartphones and tablet computers have become an integral part of our lives. One of their key features is the possibility of installing third-party apps. These apps can be very helpful for improving health and healthcare. However, medical professionals and citizens are currently being overloaded with health apps. Consequently, they will have difficulty with finding the right app, and information and features are fragmented over too many apps, thereby limiting their usefulness.
In order to combat health app overload, suppliers of apps need to do three things. One, join the open source movement, so that a few apps can work as gateway to medical information by incorporating information from different sources. Two, standardize content, so that the information provided via apps is readable. And third, in order to prevent information overload from occurring within an app, content should be personalized towards an individual's characteristics and context.
Suppliers of medical information and features need to join the open source movement and must make use of standardized medical information formats, in order to allow third parties to create valuable, mobile gateway apps. This can prevent the occurrence of health app overload. By going along in these trends, we can make health apps achieve the impact on healthcare quality and citizens' health many of us envision.
智能手机和平板电脑已成为我们生活不可或缺的一部分。其关键功能之一是能够安装第三方应用程序。这些应用程序对于改善健康和医疗保健非常有帮助。然而，医疗专业人员和市民目前面临着过量的健康应用程序。因此，他们很难找到合适的应用程序，信息和功能分散在太多的应用程序中，从而限制了它们的实用性。
为了应对健康应用程序过载的问题，应用程序供应商需要做三件事。第一，加入开源运动，使少数几个应用程序可以通过整合来自不同来源的信息作为医疗信息的门户。第二，标准化内容，使通过应用程序提供的信息具有可读性。第三，为了防止应用程序内发生信息过载，应根据个人的特点和背景对内容进行个性化处理。
医疗信息和功能供应商需要加入开源运动，并利用标准化的医疗信息格式，以便第三方创建有价值的移动门户应用程序。这可以防止健康应用程序过载的发生。顺应这些趋势，我们可以使健康应用程序对医疗质量和公民健康产生许多人所期望的影响。
