The doctor is in(2)

"If a person receives a wrong diagnosis from mobile testing and consequently misses their golden time for seeing a doctor, it's not for sure that the designer of the application has to take responsibility for it," Gao, the app developer, said. Although smartphones can increasingly be used to measure health, they are not designed for more complicated tests. Gao said that this is why many of these apps include an "only for your reference" disclaimer.

Distributors of the apps, such as Apple, also shirk all responsibility. A public relations staffer at Apple's Beijing office, who requested anonymity because she did not have permission to speak with the media, said that although Apple reviews each app before it is sold in its App Store, they can't play the same regulating role a health authority could.

Unregulated and 'not suitable'

Chinese health authorities have not yet stepped into this regulating role for apps that dole out medical advice and data.

Yin Ling, director of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital Telemedicine Center, said that although some mobile apps can test the health of the human body, he thinks they should have to get approval from the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) first.

"These health care applications are still at the research level and not suitable for widespread use," he said. "Government rules need to be introduced in this field to regulate this market."

Yin said that currently, there is no government interference in the health care app market. But the thought of regulating this sector has been under discussion, and health-related authorities want to launch regulations within two years. Until then, users' discretion over these applications is advised.

Although some apps such as Spring Rain (Chunyu Zhangshangyisheng, free, Chinese only) enable users to have direct communication with their doctors, Yin states that anything replacing face-to-face consultations cannot be recommended.

"At the current stage, this would produce many problems," he added.

Dr Yu Ying from Peking Union Medical College Hospital used to answer patient inquiries for one of these apps. She said that questions from online patients were so ambiguous that the answers from the doctors had to consequently also be vague. She prefers to meet patients in person for medical evaluations.

Although Yu said that these apps may narrow the gap between doctors and patients, she does not advise her patients to use them at the current stage when the industry is still immature.

Innovation or hinderance

Xiang Ligang, CEO of tech industry information portal cctime.com, said that although health care apps may not always be dead-on, they are a great reference point.

To him, the potential of allowing people to test themselves at home or on the go outweighs current accuracy issues.

As the technology of these apps matures, they may soon become an important aid to health care by allowing patients to do routine tests anytime, anywhere.

"There are many people that need to do blood testing regularly but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons," Xiang said. "If there is an application that can do the accurate testing and faithfully record the data of each testing, then the person could have a complete health database to be used as a good reference for doctors in the future."

A complete health database stored on an app could also create major privacy concerns.

But Xiang replied to this by saying, "I don't think it (privacy) will be a very serious thing for users."

He noted that the data collected with these apps is normally not targeting individuals. "They  just collect the customer behaviors for marketing," he said.

 Dr Yu emphasizes the limitations of these products.

"This is only a machine after all," she said. "If all the medical related things are manageable by machine, then what are the medics for?"