Unsurprisingly, 2020 was a record year for global digital health application usage. A report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science indicated that adoption has upticked due to COVID-19-driven digital solution preferences and consistent investments in digital health technology. Last year, endowments in the sector reached a record $24 billion.
According to the report, over 90,000 new applications appeared on the market in 2020. That inflates the total number of digital health applications available to consumers to around 350,000.
The usefulness of these applications, however, is not uniform; IQVIA’s assessment warned consumers to be selective after finding the median level of quality was mediocre. Following more specific download metrics, IQVIA found that the bulk of installations were from a bevvy of 110 popular applications. 83% of all applications were installed less than 5,000 times, accounting for a mere fraction (less than 1%) of overall downloads. The preeminent applications, meanwhile, saw over 10 million downloads and comprise roughly 50% of total downloads.
Although the majority of them evaluate a user’s general health statistics, applications for specific diseases have surged in popularity. They currently fill 47% of the market, up significantly from 28% in 2015. Cardiology, diabetes, and mental health-related applications account for about half of the actual content under the disease-specific application umbrella.
