3 Reasons Why Pharma mHealth Apps Have Failed

Pharma mHealth companies are struggling to have an impact on the mHealth app market generating only limited downloads and usage, despite releasing more than 100 pharma mHealth apps for iOS and Android. According to Research2Guidance’s new report “Pharma App Market Benchmarking 2014”, the leading Pharma companies have been able to generate 6.6m downloads since 2008 and have less than 1m active users. Given the dominance and reach of the pharma industry, the numbers are extremely disappointing.

Analysis and comparison of the app activities of the top 12 pharma mHealth app companies reveals the following three reasons why pharma mHealth apps have failed to penetrate the market:

1. The pharma mHealth apps are not globally available.

Almost half of the Pharma companies’ app publishing entities target only local markets. This means that their apps are available only in 3 or less countries.

2. The pharma mHealth apps is built around the core products of the Pharma companies and not around the actual market demand.  For example, if a company specializes in the treatment of hematological diseases, the app portfolio reflects that. Apps in this case would provide references to the latest research, support diagnosis and facilitate information exchange with/between the experts...