Last week, Rochelle Sharpe from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting published an article in The Washington Post about the flimsy evidence base for most health apps you can purchase in the iTunes or Google Play Android online stores. Developers have been marketing such apps for years — most of them having no research to suggest they can do half the things they claim.
Worse yet, neither Apple nor Google appear to care. Neither company responded to Sharpe’s inquiries about why they allow apps to be sold on their storefronts that claim to treat all sorts of medical and mental health problems, without the research to back them up.
So what kinds of things can your smartphone cure or alleviate the symptoms of? You might be surprised at Sharpe’s findings.