Medical Applications: The Future of Regulation

we define 'apps' as discrete, independent pieces of software that run on mobile devices. The use of such software on mobile devices within a health environment is not a new phenomenon – there is academic research discussing the opportunities of this technology as early as 1996. however, the proposition has only really become mainstream with the introduction of the Apple iPhone® and supporting App Store, backed by a hugely successful 'There's an app for that' advertising campaign. opening in July 2008 with a mere 500 applications available for download, the App Store now stocks around 500,000 applications and recently surpassed a staggering milestone: 15 billion downloads. Latterly it has been joined by rival application markets from Blackberry®, Microsoft® and, most successfully, AndroidTM.