What percentage (%) of digital health apps in the UK are safe to use?

According to ORCHA, only 20% of digital health apps in the UK can be considered safe to use.

Because of this, situations may arise where patients do not know which solutions they can trust.
When patients lose trust in a digital health app, there can be serious consequences which result in negative health outcomes due to behaviours such as incorrectly self-dosing insulin.

According to a study by the University College London in 2018, the number of digital health apps in the UK which had been developed with the participation of health experts was also only 20%.
While we can't speculate on the correlation between the number of safe, regulated digital health apps and those developed with healthcare professional participation, both of these figures are indicative of the current market climate.

Despite being one of the biggest activators for mobile health apps, healthcare professionals are often not considered by companies that are developing these solutions.