Healthcare in the smartphone: the situation in Russia

The purpose of the study was to analyze the popularity of mobile applications for health care in Russia.

Material and methods. The app stores «App Store» of Apple and «Google Play Store» of Google were studied for comparative analysis. In case of The App Store we analyzed the categories «Medicine and Health and Fitness», in the Google Play Store – the categories «Medicine», «Motherhood and Childhood» and «Health and Fitness». The total amount of applications was 231. The reviewed applications were grouped into several groups and ranked in descending order of popularity.

Results. The most popular applications by the number of downloads were applications from the group «Fitness and healthy lifestyle»: by individual positions – more than 1,2 billion. installations. On the second place was the group «Women's Health» with more than 285 million installations. The highest ratings of applications in the context of groups were received by services related to pregnancy control, evaluation of fetal and child development, as well as services for determining the symptoms of diseases.

Conclusions. Thus, the most popular content for health care is the analysis of physical activity, regular diagnostics of the state of the body, monitoring of women's health indicators and monitoring the course of pregnancy, children's health.