What are mHealth Apps? Types, Examples, Costs, and More

mHealth applications have taken over the industry—and for good reason. From scheduling appointments to streamlining diagnoses and supporting health tracking across mental health, fitness, and more, mobile health apps have earned their spot in modern healthcare. 

With healthcare and its technological trends now just a click away, both providers and patients have adapted to this modern approach, making it the new industry standard. Rather than asking whether you should adopt mHealth apps, the real question is: what will make your app different? 

With all eyes on the healthcare industry, healthcare providers and health gurus have a unique opportunity to grasp users with apps that offer short- and long-term care—and developing a custom solution is the key to staying ahead. 

Explore this topic with us, where we’ll discuss the mobile health app market in more detail, key features of mobile healthcare apps, and examples of mHealth apps. 

What are mHealth apps? 

mHealth apps, or mobile health applications, are smartphone applications designed to help patients and healthcare providers manage conditions, communicate online, and streamline care delivery. From providing a range of health-related services to enabling health research, these apps are intended to improve health outcomes. 

There are various types of mHealth apps available, offering features such as symptom tracking, physical activity and sleep monitoring, heart rate monitoring, and calorie and water intake tracking, among others. 

Mobile Health App Market 

Though mobile applications for healthcare have been around for years, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 outbreak that the mobile health app market really took off. In 2020, there was a huge increase in healthcare apps, with many businesses commercializing COVID-19-related apps that make diagnoses and connect patients with healthcare providers online.  

And with a new spotlight on the overall healthcare sector, there was also significant growth in other health-related areas, such as wellness and fitness.  

So who’s leading the mHealth app market? 

North America. Holding a 30.56% share in 2024, the region’s leadership is driven by a high concentration of major health app companies, increasing internet penetration, and a rising prevalence of chronic conditions linked to sedentary lifestyles. 

The image below from Fortune Business Insights provides insight into the mHealth apps market: 

The global mHealth apps market size is expected to reach 88.70 billion by 2032, meaning there’s a huge opportunity for businesses to create mHealth apps that cater to the general public as well as their niche healthcare market. 

Types of Mobile Health Apps  

So, what are the main types of mHealth apps? 

Let’s break down the leading categories of mobile health apps to see what they look like in the real world. 

• Fitness and Exercise Apps: Helps keep users committed to improving their physical health by offering workout routines tailored to their goals. They track physical activity, provide personalized routines, and monitor fitness goals.  
• Diet and Nutrition Apps: Motivates users to create healthy eating habits through meal planning, calorie counting, and monitoring food intake.  
• Sleep Tracking Apps: Monitors sleep patterns and provides insights for improving sleep quality. They detect interrupted sleep, letting you know when you’re tossing and turning or waking through the night. 
• Meditation and Mindfulness Apps: Uses meditation to enable users to manage stress and improve their mindfulness skills. They offer guided meditation, stress reduction, and mindfulness exercises.  
• Women’s Health Apps: Monitors and manages various aspects of a woman’s health. They typically include menstrual cycle trackers, fertility apps, and pregnancy apps.  
• Smoking Cessation and Substance Abuse Apps: Provides support and resources for quitting smoking and managing substance dependencies.  

• Diabetes Management Apps: Enables users to closely monitor blood glucose levels, track insulin dosage, and manage carbohydrate intake for effective diabetes control. 
• Heart Disease and Hypertension Apps: Supports heart health by allowing users to monitor their blood pressure and heart rate. Offers lifestyle modification tips to improve overall health. 
• Asthma and Respiratory Apps: Allows people with asthma to self-manage more effectively and lets clinicians remotely monitor, manage, and support patients. These apps track symptoms, medication use, and provide air quality alerts.  
• Cancer Care Apps: Empowers, connects, and creates awareness for people affected by different types of cancer. Assists in managing treatment schedules, side effects, and patient education.  
• Arthritis and Pain Management Apps: Helps individuals manage arthritis and chronic pain more effectively by providing resources for pain tracking, medication reminders, and physical therapy exercises.  

• Stress and Anxiety Relief Apps: Provides relief and support for managing stress and anxiety. Offers relaxation techniques, breathing exercises, and mood tracking.  
• Depression Management Apps: Helps users manage the feelings and effects of depression. Provides self-help tools, mood tracking, and resources for professional help.  
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Apps: Aids users in identifying negative thought patterns and restructuring them into positive ones. Delivers therapy modules for various mental health conditions.  
• Addiction Recovery Apps: Supports substance abuse recovery through resources and community support. Allows users to track their personal sobriety, keep a virtual journal, monitor triggers, and connect with peers. 
• Teletherapy Apps: Connects users with mental health professionals for online counseling and therapy. Makes mental health care more accessible, convenient, and efficient. 

• Virtual Doctor Visits: Enables video consultations with healthcare providers, offering users convenient access to medical advice and care from the comfort of their homes. 
• Symptom Checkers and Diagnostic Tools: Aids in initial assessment by using AI to analyze symptoms and suggest potential diagnoses. Acts as a reliable source of health information, allowing patients to educate themselves. 
• Prescription and Medication Delivery Services: Streamlines the process of obtaining prescriptions online and ensures the convenient delivery of medications to the user’s doorstep, enhancing accessibility and convenience in healthcare. 

• Remote Patient Monitoring Apps: Collects and transmits patient data to healthcare providers, allowing for continuous monitoring of health conditions, improved patient outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, and enhanced access to care.
• Wearable Device Integration Apps: Syncs with devices like smartwatches to provide health data monitoring, real-time feedback, personalized recommendations, sleep analysis, social integration, and continuous progress tracking. 
• Home Monitoring and Elder Care Apps: Assists in monitoring the health and safety of elderly patients, providing caregivers and family members with valuable insights and alerts for timely assistance when needed. 

• Medical Records Management Apps: Stores and manages personal health records and medical history, encouraging patients to take a more active role in managing their health and allowing for seamless sharing of patient information across various healthcare settings. 
• Appointment Scheduling and Reminders: Schedules doctor’s appointments and provides medication reminders to help individuals stay organized with their healthcare routine. 

• Pregnancy Tracking Apps: Monitors pregnancy milestones and provides access to valuable resources between doctor’s appointments, such as information about pregnancy health and fetal development. 
• Breastfeeding and Newborn Care Apps: Assists new parents in ensuring the health and well-being of their baby by providing guidance on breastfeeding techniques and newborn care.  

• First Aid and Emergency Guidance Apps: Offers immediate guidance for common emergency situations. Analyzes situations, suggests appropriate interventions, and even provides feedback on the user’s actions. 
• Location-Based Emergency Services Apps: Uses the user’s location for quick access to local emergency services, ensuring immediate assistance during emergencies. 

Key Features of Effective mHealth Apps  

So, what features should a successful mobile health app have? 

After looking at a number of mHealth apps, we’ve compiled a list of some of the must-have features: 

• User-friendly Interface: A successful user-friendly interface is easy to navigate, promotes engagement, and is accessible to different types of users. This encourages users to use the app successfully, leading to better health outcomes. 

• Data Security and Privacy: Software developers should apply security best practices to protect sensitive health information and inspire confidence in their users. This can be accomplished by employing various tactics to ensure privacy, such as encryption, user authentication, and compliance with regulations.  

• Customization and Personalization: 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. In other words, the key to improved user engagement and outcomes is delivering a personalized user experience. This can be achieved by allowing users to customize elements such as their profiles, privacy settings, and goals, and by using AI to deliver tailored recommendations and experiences in real time. 

• Real-time Monitoring and Alerts: This feature helps users and healthcare providers track and manage conditions in real-time, eliminating the need for frequent in-person visits and allowing healthcare providers to monitor the progress of treatments or conditions. 

• AI-Powered Clinical Decision Support: Internal mobile health apps powered by AI technologies can suggest potential diagnoses, flag risks, and deliver tailored recommendations in real time. Common use cases include using AI to interpret clinical notes, predict adverse events, and support personalized treatment plans. Interested in exploring how AI software is being used in radiology? In Episode 3 of our podcast series, host John Stamper sits down with Josh Polster, CEO of Mediphany, to discuss How AI & Custom Software are Reshaping Radiology. 

• AI-Powered Assistants: AI assistants can check symptoms, support chronic care management, and handle administrative tasks such as appointment scheduling and reminders. With 64% of patients ready to use AI-powered virtual nurse assistants, there’s a strong opportunity to enhance patient engagement and streamline care delivery through intelligent automation. 

• Clinical Accuracy and Reliability: Reliable and accurate information is crucial for informed decision-making regarding healthcare, lifestyle choices, and treatment options, making it an important aspect of mHealth apps. 

• Interoperability with Other Health Systems: This ensures the smooth flow of data across different platforms and systems, allowing users to access updated information at any time.  

• Integration with Wearable Devices: Wearable medical technology accurately monitors fitness, heart rate, general wellness, and disease management. Due to its role in enhancing monitoring, diagnostics, and treatment capabilities, the global wearable medical devices market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 25.53% from 2025 to 2030, demonstrating the growing reliance on wearable technology to support proactive, data-driven healthcare. 

With so many subcategories within the health industry, each business must carefully select the right features to cater to their audience. If you’re ready to explore custom healthcare software development or want to discuss how AI can enhance your mobile health app, schedule a free consultation today. 

Top 10 Revolutionary mHealth Apps  

Let’s take a look at 10 trending examples of mHealth apps, exploring what they are, their key features, advantages, and disadvantages. 

MyFitnessPal is an all-in-one food, exercise, and calorie tracker. It has personalized nutrition insights, a barcode scanner that makes tracking calories and macros easier than ever, and tools to help you build healthy habits. 

Key Features:

Headspace is a mobile health app that prioritizes mindfulness, providing access to lifelong mental health support.  

This software uses evidence-based meditation and mindfulness tools, mental health coaching, therapy, and psychiatry to help users create life-changing habits, with a library of 500+ meditations, guided courses, and more. 

Key Features:

Fitbit is a wearable fitness tracker that helps users keep track of vital bodily functions, such as sleeping patterns, heart rate, active zone minutes, and more. 

The premium app comes with a full library of workouts led by Fitbit’s trainers, as well as advanced features to help elevate your health and fitness routine. 

Key Features:

MEDITECH MHealth is the mobile version of MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal. It was designed to provide healthcare professionals and patients with access to essential healthcare information and tools through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. 

Key Features:

Flow depression treatment is a personal guide that helps you understand, treat, and prevent depression.  

This app uses the latest psychology and neuroscience research to improve your mental health, providing a virtual therapist, brain stimulation, relevant content, and weekly monitoring. 

Key Features:

mySugr is a diabetes management application that lets users track their data in a concise, intuitive, and paperless format.  

It stores all your important diabetes data from connected devices, integrations, and manual entries in one convenient place. One of its top features is the mySugr Bolus Calculator, a feature that helps you calculate the right amount of insulin for corrections and mealtimes. 

Key Features:

PEPID is a clinical decision support tool for healthcare providers, hospitals, and schools. It provides clinicians with all the information they need when making treatment decisions, using tools such as pill identification, an IV compatibility checker, dosing and medical calculators, and much more. 

Key Features:

UpToDate is a clinical decision support application that provides evidence-based resources for hospitals, labs, healthcare businesses, or anyone undergoing training. 

When users face a challenging clinical question or need to confirm an approach, they use this app to receive guidance and trusted answers based on the latest evidence and best practices. 

Key Features:

Talkspace is a platform that provides mental health services, including therapy and counseling, to individuals, teens, and couples. 

Through this platform, users can access psychiatric evaluations, diagnoses, and medication. 

Key Features:

Ada Health is a health assessment and symptom-checking app designed to help individuals assess their health, understand their symptoms, and make informed decisions about their healthcare. 

Key Features:

Investing in a Mobile Health App 

In today’s tech-savvy world, mHealth apps bring a lot of advantages to those in the healthcare industry. But what are the must-knows for anyone interested in developing their own app?  

Before taking the leap, consider the following things: 

Challenges and Considerations  

• Data Security and Privacy Concerns: One of the biggest concerns of users is the security and privacy of sensitive health-related data. One study even found that mobile users don’t feel secure when installing mobile apps, with concerns about hacking and the exposure of personal and private information remaining pervasive. To address these risks, developers must consider authentication, privilege management, secure data storage and communication, compliance, and testing and installation. 

• Ensuring Clinical Accuracy and Credibility: To build credibility, reliable applications should only provide evidence-based information, update information regularly, conduct peer review, and consult healthcare professionals. When AI is involved, it’s equally important to validate models for accuracy, monitor performance over time, and ensure outputs are transparent, explainable, and clinically sound. 

• Addressing the Digital Divide and Accessibility: Making healthcare services and resources available to everybody is a large concern in the world of mobile healthcare apps. This issue can be addressed by providing services in multiple languages, offering low-cost versions, collaborating with local healthcare providers, and implementing an offline mode so that users can access content without an internet connection. AI can further support accessibility in several ways. For example, voice assistants enable hands-free navigation, guidance, and access to health information, making care more accessible across diverse needs and environments. 

• Overcoming User Adoption Barriers: There are several barriers that healthcare providers and patients face when using online applications, such as lack of technical skills, flawed integration processes, and security and privacy issues. Experienced application developers will know exactly how to address these issues to guarantee that all users have a positive experience with the app. 

• Regulatory Compliance: Mobile development solutions in healthcare must comply with regulations such as HIPAA, HITECH, FDA regulations for medical devices, and GDPR to ensure the safety and security of your app. With AI in healthcare becoming increasingly relevant, AI software must also be designed with compliance in mind, including managing bias and ensuring explainability. Watch episode 4 of our podcast series to learn more about AI legal compliance, where we discuss building ethical, effective, and compliant AI systems. 

Design and Development of mHealth Apps  

• Understanding User Needs and Expectations: Understanding what your target audience needs is a crucial part of creating a successful user interface design. Designers should conduct user research, identify user goals, and create personas to create an app that meets their users’ expectations. 

• Essential Technical Components: There are many technical components that create a more enjoyable user experience, including user authentication and authorization, user profile management, data storage and management, health tracking and monitoring, push notifications, payment and billing, appointment scheduling, and much more, depending on the type of mHealth app you develop. 

• Developing an mHealth app and the costs associated with it: Developing a mobile health application is a complex process that consists of multiple phases to guarantee a successful end product. The overall cost depends on many factors, such as the complexity of the project, features and functionality, platform compatibility, 3rd party service integration, and hardware uses. Read our mHealth app development guide for more detailed information. 

• Regulatory Approval Process and Considerations: This process can vary depending on the country, the app’s intended use, and the type of data it handles. However, some of the common principles that developers must consider are compliance, risk classification, clinical validation, and user-informed consent, to name a few. 

Our Success Stories 

Our team at Scopic has nearly 20 years of experience developing healthcare applications that are both impactful and reliable. Our services include a wide range of medical software development; EHR software development, telemedicine and telehealth app development, wellness and fitness application development, nutrition apps, and more.  

A great example is our work with Medical Records Tracker. The app addresses common medical tracking challenges, such as fragmented systems and lost instructions. To help users securely organize health records, medication schedules, and appointments, the founders worked with our team to refactor the code, fix bugs, improve the UI, and enhance core functionality. This resulted in a more reliable, user-friendly experience that simplifies day-to-day health management. 

Interested in exploring more of our past work? Check out our large portfolio of healthcare applications, where we’ve worked with a variety of clients to develop mHealth apps that prioritize exercise, diet, medical records, wellness, and more. 

At Scopic, we believe that telehealth app development helps improve global health outcomes, and our diverse team has the tools, experience, and knowledge to develop technology-forward apps that appeal to both healthcare providers and patients. 

The Future of mHealth Apps  

With more and more people turning to online applications for quick and efficient access to health-related information and services, the future of mHealth apps looks promising. 

As adoption continues to grow, mobile health apps are expected to become even more deeply integrated into healthcare services, enabling continuous monitoring, more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans, and the development of healthier habits for individuals who want to take a more active role in managing their health. 

At the same time, it’s impossible to discuss the future of mobile applications for healthcare without acknowledging the increasingly important role of artificial intelligence. As highlighted throughout this article, AI enables real-time monitoring, supports diagnostics and personalized treatment recommendations, and provides 24/7 assistance—without placing additional strain on healthcare resources. 

As stated by Statista, “The application of AI in healthcare could lead to improvements in many areas as this technology’s importance is realized. The technology has the potential to lead to more accurate diagnoses, better care, and less time spent by healthcare professionals on administrative tasks, which in turn enables more time spent on interacting and treating patients.” 

By automating time-consuming tasks, AI also helps address challenges such as workforce shortages, ultimately reducing physician burnout. 

One of the most significant advantages of these advancements is expanded access to healthcare. AI-powered mHealth solutions make it possible to deliver services to remote and low-income communities at a fraction of the traditional cost, contributing to improved global health outcomes. 

Looking ahead, we expect continued growth in emerging technologies that enhance mHealth applications, particularly through greater adoption of AI and IoT-driven solutions. 

Conclusion 

The mobile health app market is booming due to the new generation of technology-driven, health-conscious individuals. With health at the top of everyone’s minds, there’s a new opportunity for innovative healthcare applications that focus on a range of topics, including doctor’s appointments, fitness, diet, and mental health. 

At Scopic, our mHealth app development services are tailored to meet the evolving needs of modern healthcare providers and patients alike, delivering secure, scalable, and user-centric solutions that enhance engagement, streamline care delivery, and support long-term health outcomes. 

If you have an idea for a new mHealth app, share your idea with our team, and we’ll provide you with an estimate for your project. 

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