Impact of mobile health and medical applications on clinical practice in gastroenterology

Table 1 Glossary and explanation of digital health terms

Term	Explanation
eHealth, electronic health	Generic term for digitalization in health care and the associated applications of ICT
ICT	Technologies used for communication, storage, processing and evaluation of data
Telemedicine/telehealth	The physical distance between the medical service provider and recipient is bridged by the use of ICT, e.g., teleradiology
Mobile health, mHealth	Medical applications that can be accessed from mobile devices (e.g., tablets, mobile phones, smart watches)
Electronic patient file, electronic health record[11]	The central storage of patient data, which can be accessed by different authorized persons independent of the location
Health apps, medicical apps	Special software programs/applications for mobile devices that serve medical issues. The transition to fitness apps is partly fluent

ICT: Information and communication technologies.

Table 2 Examples for use of mobile health applications and medical apps

Type and mechanism	Example	Possible benefits or harms
Patient education	Teaching app for bowel preparation before colonoscopy	Improvement in results, reduction of costs
Telemedicine	Video or online consultation	Low barrier accessibility of specialists, patient-physician interaction is changed
eHealth records	EMR	Security and privacy concepts need to be addressed, interoperability issues
Digital biomarkers	Smartwatch, counting of steps per day	Individualized strategies for health behavior changes. So far missing standardization

EMR: Electronic medical records.