ArticleDigital health
Growth in the development of health and fitness mobile apps amid COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Use of Mobile Technologies for Smoking Cessation Among Smokers and Former Smokers: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Clinical Usability of Exercise Prescription Apps for Professional Use: Systematic Review and Multidimensional Evaluation.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2026Pooled it
- Internet-Based Interventions for Preventing Premature Birth in Preconceptional Women of Childbearing Age: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Mobile Apps for Common Noncommunicable Disease Management: Systematic Search in App Stores and Evaluation Using the Mobile App Rating Scale.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2024Pooled it
- Effectiveness and Theoretical Foundations of mHealth Apps for Physical Activity, Healthy Eating, and Weight Loss: Protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Digital Health Interventions for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease: The Current Impact and Future Directions for Prevention and Management.Journal of atherosclerosis and thrombosis · 2025Review
- Article
- 'Journal of health psychology · 2024Article
- Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Expand Accessibility and Improve Precision in Rehabilitation and Exercise for People with Disabilities.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Review
- Nutrition and Diet Apps: Brazilian Panorama before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Leveraging mobile fitness apps for healthier lifestyles: How affordances drive sustained engagement.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: Technology in the form of mobile apps has played an essential role in facilitating, tracking, and maintaining health and fitness activities during the pandemic. When countries opted for partial or complete lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 virus, it led to people working on their health and fitness-related activities from their homes, just as they continued working from home. This paper aims to quantify the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on the development of health and fitness mobile apps. Specifically, we compute the effect of coronavirus disease 2019 on the growth of different sub-categories of health and fitness apps. Methods: We scraped data about a population of 78,890 health and fitness apps from the iOS App Store. First, categories of health and fitness apps are identified using text analysis on the descriptions of apps. Second, the rise in the development of new apps is analyzed. To quantify the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on the growth of the health and fitness apps, multiple time-series forecasting models are created for different categories of health and fitness apps. Results: The text analysis identified twelve different types of health and fitness apps on the app market. Our models estimated that the number of health and fitness apps on the iOS app market exceeded the expected growth by 29.9% after the pandemic. The results of all categories of health and fitness are discussed in the paper. Conclusions: Our analysis found significant growth in the development of new health and fitness apps after the pandemic outbreak. The post hoc study of the population of health and fitness apps presented the current state of this particular area of the app market. In addition, it provided potential growth areas in app markets where there are fewer apps.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.