Virtually no smartphone weight management app has been developed by a certified health organisation or university, a European conference will be told.
Neither is there any published evidence of effectiveness for weight-loss or weight-gain prevention apps.
Research being presented at the European Obesity Summit, in Gothenburg, Sweden, this week, will reveal that of the 3,013 available relevant apps identified by researchers on the Apple store or Google Play Store in the UK, USA and Singapore, only 17 have been developed by a certified health organisation or university.
Google Play Store had 2,196 apps, of which 1,808 were free, while Apple iTunes offered 817, of which 352 were freely available.
Dr Charoula Nikolaou, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and Professor Mike Lean, University of Glasgow, UK, who will present their findings, calculated that 666,169,136 downloads had been made of the 3,013 apps they found.
“Apps on lifestyle advice for weight management are very popular,” they said. “They offer a huge opportunity to provide effective weight control for vulnerable young people, but currently they all lack certified content-expertise or evidence of effectiveness.
“Transferring previously-tested, effective, professionally designed online weight control materials into ‘app’ form would assure content-quality, for use and evaluation in clinical or public health settings.”
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