Body in Mind posted this excellent research from Marina Pinheiro and Gustavo Machado about the abundant health apps out there; What App is Good for My Back?

Pulse+IT also recently posted their story, There’s a bad app for That.

There are various purposes health apps are made. From where I’m standing, my app was never a promise to solve a health problem – that’s impossible.

I’ve been asked many times why Pain Train isn’t available as an app. Pain Train currently is fully functional as a website on any desktop or hand-held device.

The two main agendas of Pain Train, are:

  1. to help communicate the person’s personal pain experience, and
  2. to encourage people with chronic pain to take a serious and active role in their self management!

The findings of What App is Good for My Back were of great interest to me. As a patient I’m on the look out for quality self management, especially as I founded my own version.

“The quality of the apps was low, since they generally had non-engaging features, unattractive layouts, and questionable or low-quality information”

Apps are great for gathering fast, general facts but chronic pain is a complex issue and there’s so much more to document if, in fact, the resource is going to succeed in helping the person explain their experience accurately.

Creating your user profile on Pain Train will take some time – it’s a task that should be taken seriously.

Pain Train‘s purpose is to describe a real person and the real person’s very real pain experience – there’s no, quick, fast, speedy, convenient way to to do that as every part of pain management is difficult.

“We also note that consumers should be cautious about which app they chose and realise that developers often provide the ‘false message’ that their apps can provide instant pain relief”

It will only be a matter of time (and funds) before we build a Pain Train app version – merely for navigation convenience.

People with pain require serious support and they have alot of information to communicate. And they should only ever need to communicate that info, once!