The growing significance of smartphone apps in data-driven clinical decision-making: Challenges and pitfalls

Smartphone applications have a growing role within the medical field, as they provide both doctors and patients with instant access to information and decision-support tools. This chapter focuses on data-driven clinical decision-making apps and explaining different categories of apps used in health care such as predictive model apps, camera-based apps, and artificial intelligence–based apps. Recent studies show the potential of using clinical decision-support applications in the medical field, by empowering the role of patients and the clinicians in decision-making, and emphasizing the importance and contribution of technology and artificial intelligence in the quality of life and health care. However, it also becomes clear that there is a need for standardized clinical evaluation guidelines for these applications. In conclusion, there is a need for clinical trials to increase the quality of applications.