Consumers tend to find and download their own health apps rather than follow a specific recommendation from a healthcare provider or another third party, says a new survey from digital healthcare research and investment firm Rock Health.

The survey of 4,000 web-connected consumers also finds that middle-aged consumers are slightly more likely than those older and younger to use their app to track fitness, wellness and weight loss. Of consumers in the survey with smartphones age 35 to 55, 36% had downloaded at least one health app and 36% of those with health apps had used at least one of them in the last 30 days. That compares to 34% and 32%, respectively, for consumers under age 35 and 30% and 32%, respectively, for consumers age 55 and above.

73% of respondents with smartphones and health apps also discovered and downloaded a health app on their own through an app store or online compared with 22% who downloaded an app because of a recommendation from a family or friend, 16% from a healthcare provider and 7% from an insurance company. 54% of smartphone-owning consumers with iPhones and iPads had downloaded a health app compared with 36% of Android users. 55% of Apple device owners who had ever downloaded health apps had used a health app in the last 30 days compared with 47% with an Android mobile device. Significant differences were found in health app downloaders based on their smartphone operating system, the survey says.

Consumers in poor health tend to have health apps more often than those who consider themselves healthy. 46% of consumers who owned smartphones and were in bad health, defined by the survey as consumers with multiple chronic illnesses, who have been hospitalized in the past year or who have been to the doctor 10 or more times in 12 months, have downloaded a health app. In comparison 40% of consumers who listed their health as good have downloaded a health app. Those in bad health were significantly more likely to have downloaded a health app, the survey says.

Health app use is one measure of how much more consumers are using the Internet and mobile devices to make more of their healthcare decisions, including to monitor an illness, buy insurance online or conduct online doctor visits, says Rock Health strategy manager Tracy Wang. Our survey found that a majority of respondents still track key health factors in their head or on paper, but more are moving towards using mobile devices, Wang says. The only exception was tracking physical activity because more consumers track physical activity in an app than they do in their head or on paper, which is likely attributed to how convenient and seamless that process is for consumers.

71% of U.S. adults in the survey own a smartphone and 30% of smartphone owners have downloaded a health app, Wang says. Most apps fail to provide users with enough value or actionable insights, Wang says. In the near future more consumers likely will use apps to monitor a condition such as high blood pressure, she says. Passive sensors in smartphones or wearables that sync data over Bluetoothall these convenience factors (will) likely play a key role in the adoption of mobile health apps for physical activity, Wang says. Factors which currently dominate in paper tracking such as weight and blood pressure see the most demand to shift towards mobile-based tracking because these are health metrics that consumers care about.

She says healthcare providers can encourage consumers to use mobile health apps by developing more apps that track specific health conditions and that offer recommendations. Mobile health allows consumers to access anything and everything about their health on their smartphones, and this engages and empowers them to be more involved in their health, Wang says.