The World Health Organization has stated that digital health applications and services will prove to be beneficial in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through making good quality well-being and health services available to all populations in the world (Varri, 2020). Applications greater than 350,000 are present in the Fitness, Health and Medical categories in the major application stores. Mobile health apps such as Headspace and HealthTap, which will be evaluated in the following sections, have the potential to improve the managing ability of individuals with chronic Mental Or Physical Conditions (Byambasuren et al., 2020). Headspace is a mindfulness application that makes meditation simple for everyone. The primary objective of this application is “to improve the health and happiness of the world.” The application achieves this goal through “science-backed” meditation and mindfulness tools that aid the consumer in developing life-altering habits that support their mental health. The application was launched in 2012 and has since been used by millions of people worldwide, including Australians. The application uses Amazon Web Services and AWS Partner Auth, which ensures that the service provided by the application is secure and stable (Headspace, 2022 (a)).
The HealthTap application provides trustworthy solutions and advice collected from over fifty thousand healthcare professionals. The primary objective of the application is to improve health care access for all populations by supervising the users towards improved health and managing their care. HealthTap was launched in 2010 and has provided around-the-clock access to healthcare to people worldwide. The HealthTap application uses the HOPES health operating system that uses real-time analytical tools to store user information and allows access from any device (HealthTap, 2022). The reviews by users of HealthTap and Headspace have been mostly positive. A review by one of the users of Headspace read, “I never thought I would be able to meditate. Not only can I meditate now, but this app has cured my long-suffering insomnia” (Headspace, 2022 (b)). The reviews for HealthTap were similar, where users elaborated on the ease of access to healthcare and the good quality of service they received on the application.
Headspace was created by former Buddhist monks Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson, who launched the app to make meditation easy for everyone. The application includes an essential feature that contains ten instructional videos, each of ten-minute length, intended to be viewed per day by the user. Next, the application asks the user to subscribe to access the next two features and detailed meditation guides on relationships and health. The foundation of the application was to ‘clear the mind’ of the user and help them manage their mental health conditions in a better way (Kleeman, 2015). Australia has been working to implement mobile health technologies. They believe that mobile health and telehealth solutions might improve access to care and patient-professional communication. Australian healthcare has been focused on refining the health care services on both the national and patient-level through improving the health outcomes for the population across the country. The health care industry is planning to bring care to the patients and cultivate a better level of patient interaction within medical care. The number of individuals with serious chronic conditions is being migrated to outpatient status, and the doctors are constantly using mobile health applications to transform the quality of service provided to the patient population in Australia (Gruessner, 2015).. The developers of health applications and healthcare providers believe that telehealth applications can play a crucial role in the Australian health care sector, pushing healthcare access to advanced solutions within the entire medical care field. Applications such as Headspace have increased the engagement of patients with healthcare services by providing them access to information that will allow them to use the data to enhance their mental health and take steps for their overall health. The use of applications such as Headspace in the clinical setting is facing a few challenges to be completely adopted in the field. The biggest concern for them is the management of the data produced by the application, as there still exist gaps in regulations concerning privacy and data ownership (Gruessner, 2015). The practitioners in most professional settings were found to recommend mental health and mindfulness applications such as Headspace for their patients undergoing mental health crises. The practitioners were found to initially avoid such applications.
Nevertheless, the effectiveness and safety of Headspace as it runs on AWS allowed the professionals to overcome these barriers. It was also found that health care professionals such as general practitioners have been personally using Headspace but have recommended the application sparingly. The cause of this inhibition was identified as the practitioners’ lacking knowledge regarding other effective applications such as Headspace and the shortage of reliable sources to access these applications (Byambasuren, 2019). The application is considered an effective tool for improving psychosocial and mental well-being, serving as a useful mindfulness-promoting medium that has reached a huge population across the country (Mani et al., 2015). On a scale of 10, the mindfulness application Headspace would earn a score of 5 as it is an easy-to-use application with ease of access that allows the consumers to develop strategies to manage their mental health conditions. In addition, the application is also hosted on an AWS cloud server, which makes the application secure and authentic.
HealthTap provides live consultations with competent physicians through their digital devices. The application offers services at a low cost and additional benefits. The application was developed to diagnose and treat common medical conditions, including mental and dental concerns. The application can be easily accessed by the user’s mobile device or laptop, or tablet. The users can access a video consultation, or they can choose to avail their consultation through text message. The individual can obtain an appointment by filling a short request for application and describing their symptoms. After payment, they are instantly connected to a video consultation if the user prefers it. They can submit an unidentified question to the qualified doctors on the application and receive a response within twenty-four hours without any cost (Headspace, 2022). The Australian healthcare service has funded several telehealth services. The irregular distribution of the workforce in the healthcare sector leads to differential health service access and the related facilities to the general population. The cost of health care for regional residents who fall into the lower-income range is an important factor that led to mobile health applications such as HealthTap. Australian health care facilities have attempted to reduce the additional costs and travel time for patients allowing them to access health care services at home (Taylor et al., 2021). The facilitators of prescribing applications such as HealthTap was the extensive use of digital devices by the younger patients, which enables access to information, providing convenient and low-cost alternatives. Another facilitator was the availability and ease of use of the application for the younger population, which form the major population of online healthcare service consumers (Byambasuren, 2020 (b)). It was reported that physicians who were recommending the application to younger patients, those belonging to the age group of individuals attending college, found drastic improvement in their conditions compared to those who were not recommended the application (Flett et al., 2019). In research conducted in a college of Dentistry, it was shown that mobile applications such as HealthTap successfully supported the interaction between training students and the patients, suggesting that these applications could significantly improve access to dental health care on a broader scale (Alqami et al., 2019). The application has also been reported to allow physicians to access patients’ medical records, laboratory results, diagnostic information, drug information, medical scans and images (Silva et al., 2015). Therefore, on a scale of 10, the HealthTap application would be appointed a score of 8 due to the storage of information and the accessibility the application provides to its users.
Though literature did not provide information for the regulatory issues of mindfulness applications, many media pieces suggested the regulatory and legal issues that may impact the quality of care provided by the applications. Medical professionals such as doctors have warned about the harm caused by mindfulness applications that offer breathing exercises and meditation for an individual’s mental health. They noticed that applications promise users easy, quick and effortless solutions that damage the individuals seeking help. The major issue identified by practitioners was that if the individual seeking help could not be relieved of their issue after using the application, they will blame themselves as their mental health cannot be treated. As most individuals opting to use such applications are unaware of the credibility and the authenticity of the application, they do not realize that only a small amount of such mobile health applications are developed by healthcare professionals or universities. In addition, these applications are not known to have a credible background in mental health.
Moreover, applications such as Headspace ask their users to pay an amount to avail further services present in the application. This pattern of business structure has been repeatedly seen in various types of applications that are present for the well-being of individuals with specific conditions. Practitioners noted that individuals seeking help are vulnerable due to mandatory in-app purchases, subscription models and targeted advertising in these applications. Therefore, it is evident that strict regulation is needed to be implemented on applications such as Headspace that require the consumers to make payments to access additional content offered by the service (Randall, 2017).
On the other hand, overall health well-being applications such as HealthTap, face major legal and regulatory challenges such as privacy and data security, as this application provides the user with the option to share their medical information privately or to their assigned doctor. It becomes an issue that requires attention and regulation as there are no proof of the data remaining confidential and the privacy of the consumer being maintained by the application. Further, there is no available information on the credibility of the location that stores the patient information and the authenticity of the transmission channels used for accessing data by the practitioner. Research has reported rising concern around the efficacy, user privacy and safety of mobile health services. Another serious issue with applications such as HealthTap is the misdiagnosis of health conditions that can lead to severe complications in the consumer due to late detection of the ailment by professionals working in a healthcare setting. Self-management or self-diagnosing applications such as HealthTap were deficient in measures that adhere to patient safety (Gurupur & Wan, 2017). Even though the application involves the participation of qualified health professionals in providing solutions to patients’ concerns, they are not involved in the development of the application. The application also does not follow the public health guidelines that exist for the regulation of such applications. Additionally, the application’s user interface is not simple, which results in poor user satisfaction, especially for individuals who are not technically advanced. Another key component of the application is the ease with which an individual can learn to use the application (Gurupur & Wan, 2017).
The Australian and worldwide population has widely accepted applications for mental health such as Headspace. The major ethical issues that mental health wellness applications such as headspace face are the inclusion of diverse groups such as the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse population and the Aboriginal population in the development of the application. Not including this population makes the acceptability of the application within the group difficult as the cultural aspect of the service has not been validated. Therefore, this introduces a biasness in the service provided by the application. In addition, the lack of proof that the information shared by the users is not misused raises a major ethical concern.
Moreover, the existing inequities faced by these populations when accessing healthcare are aggravated when technological aid in healthcare is monetized. The in-app purchases and mandatory subscriptions required to access additional features of the app force the community to face social inequalities that interfere with the quality of care that they can access. In addition, these monetary requirements increase the wealth inequalities for people who cannot access professional help because of their socio-economic status. Thus, increasing the barriers populations face in seeking help (Povey et al., 2020). The Wellness and overall health application, HealthTap, suffers from similar and more concerning ethical issues. The application is not empirically tested, and there is no proof of research conducted to test the efficacy and ethical alignment of the application. Issues that can be identified are the assurance of the protection of sensitive data that the users share on the application, the barrier of technology that prevents accessing help in emergencies raises another ethical issue that jeopardizes the safety of the consumer, misleading them by claiming to find a solution to their problems (Palmer & Burrows, 2021). Both the applications must address the gaps in ethical and socio-cultural aspects identified in them.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, it is recommended that mental health applications such as Headspace and the health wellness application HealthTap must include the Aboriginal and CALD populations, their representatives in the development of these applications. Including such populations increases the acceptability of the applications among a wider population and allows the service to become culturally sound. It also allows the application to address specific issues that were neglected. Secondly, the monetization of additional features offered by Headspace should be reconsidered as it hinders the accessibility of individuals who search for alternatives to expensive professional help for the management of their mental health. In addition, the application of artificial intelligence in HealthTap would solve the issue of misdiagnosing users and provide useful predictions regarding their health. Incorporating AI in the development of applications would also help point out the potential risks that a user could face in the future. Both the applications must focus on marketing their service on social media and ethically utilize the data from their apps to target a wider demographic as the existing data does not show the acceptance of the applications by people belonging to all ages, gender and culture. Lastly, involving qualified doctors and professionals in developing and maintaining the applications would provide the opportunity for the service to become reliable.
References:
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