November 13 2018: Research2Guidance has published a new report on the topic “Connectivity in Digital Health" which finds that  the app  has become the centre of a whole ecosystem of connectivity.
Some 81% of all app publishers in healthcare are using tools in app development to cover every app developer’s issue like app testing, app performance, analytics, data storage, connecting to social networks, etc. Tool usage has increased by 9 percentage points (pp) within one year.
Sharing own data with others via API is becoming industry standard: 27% of all mHealth app publishers are offering an API and 21% are planning to open their apps via API. Currently a little more than half (53%) of all mHealth app portfolios are not offering an API.In a year-on-year comparison mHealth app publishers are becoming slightly more willing to give access to their data via API. The number has increased by 4 percentage points over one year. Sharing data with others via API might become the norm in healthcare soon.
The report find that  42% of mobile health apps connect to sensors and wearable APIs… which is 16% less compared to one year ago. The abate of the fitness tracker hype has spilled over to mHealth apps connecting to external sensors and wearables as well.
Fitbit (52%) is the wearable API used the most, followed by iHealth and Withings. Wearables APIs that have lost the most percentage point within the last year are Jawbone, Fitbit and Mio (-5pp, -4pp and -3pp). Despite the average decline of connection to wearables, some companies managed to achieve growth last year: Withings (+7pp), iHealth and Garmin (both +5pp).
More details about the report "mHealth Economics 2017/2018 – Connectivity in Digital Health" can be found in our e-Health section