HealthTap Files IPO Prospectus Highlighting Doctor-Endorsed Medical Apps Rankings

HealthTap, an app dedicated to providing “professional medical information,” recently released dozens of rankings listing the healthcare apps most highly recommended by physicians. VCBeat has compiled them as follows:

HealthTap, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, surveyed more than 65,000 physicians within its network and an additional 500,000 doctors in its referral network to gather their opinions on various health and wellness apps available in the market. Based on this survey, HealthTap released a list of the top 100 medical apps for iOS and Android, further broken down into approximately 30 more specific categories, such as running and diabetes care.

Ron Gutman, Founder and CEO of HealthTap, stated that the company aims to serve as a guide for clinicians and consumers, enabling them to select physician-endorsed apps from this list rather than relying on user ratings in app stores. (Incidentally, our HealthTap app has also achieved a strong rating of 4.72 stars on the iOS App Store, Gutman noted.) HealthTap evaluates medical apps based on three criteria: ease of use; efficacy, medical accuracy, and effectiveness; and stability. Rather than using numerical scores, the list is presented in the form of physicians’ willingness to recommend the apps.

Gutman emphasized that, more importantly, physicians’ recommendations—whether made or not—are subject to a real-name registration system.

“We place great emphasis on clinical efficacy,” he said. “The investigation ultimately boils down to this: Would you, as the interviewed physician, recommend this app? Are you willing to endorse it with your name and reputation?”

There are currently over 100,000 health and fitness-related apps on the market. While they represent the fastest-growing category among all apps, they remain virtually unregulated. U.S. federal officials are studying the introduction of guidelines to ensure that clinical-grade apps are appropriately regulated; however, the vast majority of consumer-facing apps on the market will fall outside the scope of these guidelines.

Moreover, Gutman said that doctors are also increasingly prescribing apps for patients to use in conjunction with their treatment.

“They want to know which apps are useful and which are not,” he said. “They hope that doctors can screen and recommend from the myriad of apps available.”

HealthTap’s list of top-rated apps includes familiar names such as “Weight Watchers,” “the American Red Cross,” “MyFitnessPal,” and “FitnessKeeper,” as well as “White Noise Lite,” a sleep app launched by TMSoft in 2008 that has long held the top spot or ranked among the top three on the iTunes charts. Also featured are two apps—“Instant Heart Rate” and “Glucose Buddy”—developed by Azumio, a prominent internet healthcare company headquartered in Palo Alto.

Top 10 Apps on iOS and Android:

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