Getting healthy using apps

Goodbye doctors, hello apps - 18th October 2021

In Sweden, the number of people using apps for health problems has risen in the last 18 months.

Ewa-Lena Rasumusson is from Stockholm. She has knee problems and uses a Swedish app called 'Joint Academy'. This helps her painful knee joints. It has made moving around easier recently.

The app gives her a daily reminder to do special exercises. There are videos to watch. Users can also speak to a medical expert on the chat.

"I can really feel the difference," Ms Rasumusson tells us. At the start, in March 2020, she could hardly do any exercises. But now, she has improved.

More and more people in Sweden are using medical apps. Around one in five people used an app in autumn 2020, says the Swedish Internet Foundation. And, one in ten were retired.

But some experts are less excited. Sofia Rydgren Stale is the chairperson of the Swedish Medical Association. She believes apps are only suitable for certain problems.

But there is already some evidence to show that some apps, like Joint Academy, have really positive results for users.