With all the mobile technology available today, many patients pull out their phones, smartphones, or tablets while in waiting rooms or exam rooms, until the physician arrives.
You might be surprised to learn how many people are using these tools in ways related to pregnancy. Two new reports provide snapshots.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/AngryJulieMonday/Creative Commons
On average, 47% of subscribers to mobile data plans who use at least one health-related application (app) on their smartphones or tablets use an app related to pregnancy. That’s more than the 39% of app-using subscribers who used fitness-specific apps, a 2013 report from Citrix ByteMobile found.
The data are based on real-world use. Citrix ByteMobile works with 130 mobile operators in 60 countries to help them understand what people are doing on their mobile phones and devices, in order to try and optimize the data and video services on the operators’ 3G and 4G networks, according to MobiHealthNews.
Sounds impressive, but how many people is that, really? Let’s do a quick calculation. There were more than 239 million U.S. adults in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Approximately 9% of all U.S. adults have at least one health or medical app on a smartphone, according to the "Mobile Health 2012" report by the Pew Research Center. That’s more than 21 million people, so far.
The different kinds of apps get used in different ways, the Citrix ByteMobile analysis found. Even though a greater proportion of app-using mobile subscribers use pregnancy-related apps, the fitness app users generated a lot more data, accounting for 50% of all mobile health-related data traffic on wireless networks, compared with 9% of health-related data traffic from the pregnancy app users.
The apps get used at different times of day, too. The busiest time of day for apps that monitor women’s health (such as pregnancy or menstrual tracking apps) is 9 a.m. For fitness apps, 6 p.m. is the busy hour.
Other popular kinds of personal-health apps include calorie counters, apps that provide medical information, sleep cycle trackers, and relaxation tools, the report noted.
And it’s not just smartphones and iPads catching pregnant women’s attention. Fully 85% of U.S. adults own a cell phone, according to the Pew report, and many are using them in ways related to health.
My colleague Naseem Miller reported that the public-private partnership textforbaby had 260,000 pregnant women and new moms receiving free educational texts and health-related reminders on their phones in 2011, up from 150,000 in less than a year. A small preliminary study suggests that this tool is making a difference in promoting timely immunizations, prompting conversations between women and their doctors, and more.
So, the next time you walk into an exam room and find your female patient on her phone or tablet, don’t assume she’s just playing Angry Birds to pass the time. She might actually be doing something for her or her baby’s health.
–By Sherry Boschert
On Twitter @sherryboschert