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BACKGROUND Information and communications technologies are transforming our social interactions and life-styles. One of the most promising applications of information technology is healthcare and wellness management that characterized by early detection of conditions, prevention, and long-term healthcare management. OBJECTIVE The main purpose of this document is to do a study, first about the actual literature about mobile phone applications to measure and control heart-rate and second a study about these applications themselves, analyzing the different app stores more popular nowadays, Google Play Store and iTunes (for Android and iOS devices respectively). METHODS The Web portals and databases that were used to perform the searches are IEEE Explorer, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Springer, ResearchGate, Science Direct and Scopus, taking into account the date of publication from 2010 to 2018, publications in English and Spanish. RESULTS 40 relevant papers have been found related to mobile phone apps to measure and control the heart rate. The results show that of a total of 400 applications found 245 of them are in the Play Store (Android systems) and the remaining 155 were found in the iTunes Store (iOS systems). CONCLUSIONS From the review of the research articles analyzed, it can be said that the most applications found are for Android devices. They occupy 76.53% of the world mobile phone market, while iOS only owns 18.97%.

BackgroundCardiovascular diseases are the deadliest diseases worldwide, with 17.3 million deaths in 2008 alone. Among them, heart-related deaths are of the utmost relevance; a fact easily proven by the 7.25 million deaths caused by ischemic heart disease alone in that year. The latest advances in smartphones and mHealth have been used in the creation of thousands of medical apps related to cardiology, which can help to reduce these mortality rates. ObjectiveThe aim of this paper is to study the literature on mobile systems and applications currently available, as well as the existing apps related to cardiology from the leading app stores and to then classify the results to see what is available and what is missing, focusing particularly on commercial apps. MethodsTwo reviews have been developed. One is a literature review of mobile systems and applications, retrieved from several databases and systems such as Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Web of Knowledge. The other is a review of mobile apps in the leading app stores, Google play for Android and Apple’s App Store for iOS. ResultsSearch queries up to May 2013 located 406 papers and 710 apps related to cardiology and heart disease. The most researched section in the literature associated with cardiology is related to mobile heart (and vital signs) monitoring systems and the methods involved in the classification of heart signs in order to detect abnormal functions. Other systems with a significant number of papers are mobile cardiac rehabilitation systems, blood pressure measurement, and systems for the detection of heart failure. The majority of apps for cardiology are heart monitors and medical calculators. Other categories with a high number of apps are those for ECG education and interpretation, cardiology news and journals, blood pressure tracking, heart rate monitoring using an external device, and CPR instruction. There are very few guides on cardiac rehabilitation and apps for the management of the cardiac condition, and there were no apps that assist people who have undergone a heart transplant. ConclusionsThe distribution of work in the field of cardiology apps is considerably disproportionate. Whereas some systems have significant research and apps are available, other important systems lack such research and lack apps, even though the contribution they could provide is significant.