15 Mobile Apps For Better Health

By Jake Widman 11/06/2010 From helping you monitor your condition to making suggestions for improving it, today's smartphones can become valuable healthcare partners -- with the right apps. The iPhone App Store, the Android Market and the BlackBerry App World are chock full of applications that can help keep you in the pink. The Health, Wellness, and Fitness categories in the various mobile app stores are full of applications that promise to help keep you healthy. Some of them are backed by major pharmaceutical firms, while others are the brainchild of a single person who thinks they've found the solution to a health issue. We've sifted through them to bring you 15 of the best.

iManage Migraine

This free iPhone app from pharmaceutical giant Merck is intended to help migraine sufferers (numbering 28 million in the U.S., according to Merck) keep track of when and where their headaches occur, how severe they are, and if any treatment worked. The data can help patients identify the triggers for their attacks and provides a basis for discussing treatment plans and options with their doctors. The app also includes general information about migraines.

In compiling these 15 mobile apps, we steered clear of apps that were geared more toward exercise and fitness than general wellness. You can find dozens if not hundreds of apps to show you how to do pushups correctly, let you track how much time you spent at the gym, and so on. But which one(s) are best depends on your own personal goals and preferred activities. We did include one, though, because it brought something extra to the party.

Similarly, we skipped most of the many, many calorie counting apps on the market. Again, we looked for ones that supplied more than just a diary and calculator. We also stayed away from the really woo-woo "wellness" apps. Oh, and the app that claims to cure acne by making your phone's screen display a red or blue light? It's an intentional joke -- check the company name.

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