Being completely healthy is not an easy task at all. You have to watch what you eat, make sure you get plenty of exercise and plenty of sleep as well. For most Americans, obesity, high cholestorol, diabetes or high blood pressure is just something that is normal now. Being overweight is not going to help any category when it comes to health, but there are ways that you can reduce each of these bad things and it starts with being educated. What about when technology goes too far?
With the increased use of smartphones and other mobile devices these days, the developers around the world are starting to look at ways they can tie any health related check to a mobile app that you can download right to your phone. One of the apps that has gained in popularity over the last few years is one that can test your blood pressure. Seems like a good idea, right? The real question is whether or not you can trust the app.
According to sources that have reviewed these types of apps, they are reportedly supposed to make your phone read your blood pressure and report it to you. All you have to do is hold your finger to the camera sensor and it will return a result for you to base your daily life on. Doctors, on the other hand, are not too keen on whether the blood pressure can be that accurate. One doctor says that it is just in the research and development stages and cannot be used in a clinical setting.
There are plenty of mobile apps that are available in the Google Play Store right now, as well as the Apple iTunes store. One study took the top 100 apps that are categorized under “hypertension” and “high blood pressure” and put them to the test. The results might be surprising to some. More than 75 percent of them had tools for tracking your medical data. Only 7 of the apps claimed that you only needed to push on the display, or hold your finger over the camera to get a reading. Doctors say this is not accurate.
Since the FDA regulates things like this, it is hard to say what you can really expect from a mobile application that checks your “high blood pressure”. The FDA has not approved any mobile app for this purpose, so that raises that concern that doctors have about patients thinking they are getting real data, when they are not getting anything useful at all at this point.