Providing Patients with Actionable Medical Knowledge: mHealth Apps for Laypeople

Healthcare practitioners are professionals with highly specialized knowledge leaving a vast gap between them and their patients. Mobile Health applications may provide a fast and precise diagnosis to patients through expert systems and chatbots. We surveyed and classified Mobile Health apps, discussing their advantages, such as lower costs and replicability. However, most technologies lack the common sense and creativity to solve individual cases, and their precision is far from that of humans. Mobile Health is a relatively new field, and new technologies will be developed in the future, changing the current balance in favor of machines but not replacing healthcare professionals completely. This trend should be watched closely by those interested in healthcare, given its potential for the improvement of patient treatment and also their capacity to disrupt healthcare professionals’ formation and work. Therefore, this work contributes to understanding the capabilities and limitations of mHealth apps in providing medical diagnosis and treatment.