The Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) has launched a health app formulary to help healthcare professionals and consumers know which health apps they can trust.  

The site includes reviews of health apps across a range of health conditions relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, including reviews of COVID-19 apps launched to date.

ORCHA is also offering free professional accounts to all NHS staff for the next three months. The ORCHA Pro Account lets healthcare professionals find and recommend health apps to patients via text or email. This avoids any errors in remembering or downloading the wrong app, and gives the professional a record of who has been recommended an app.   

ORCHA measures the health of health apps. It verifies the accuracy, security, and risks associated with their use. Any app offering special pricing or approaches at this time, if it is particularly useful in supporting the COVID-19 response, or if there are any implementation approaches to support the COVID-19 challenge, is given a specific ‘COVID-19’ label in the formulary.

Examples of apps that can be found in the library include:

• SilverCloud: Offering digital programmes for a range of common mental health conditions and programmes specifically for the mental health aspects of living with a long term condition.
• Sleepio: A digital programme scientifically proven to help you sleep well without taking medication. Supporting the COVID-19 efforts, Sleepio is currently free for all NHS staff.
• FibriCheck: Test your heart rhythm in just 60 seconds by holding your finger over the camera on your smartphone. 
• Pharmacy2U:  Get your medicine without leaving home. Flexible and free delivery for NHS prescriptions.

The COVID-19 Health App Formulary can be found at: https://covid19.orcha.co.uk

Health Professionals can sign up to their free ORCHA Pro Account here too.

Brian Donnelly, chief executive, CECOPS CIC said: “In the current COVID-19 crisis, finding the most effective health apps that meet trusted standards is so important. People need assurance when selecting apps. CECOPS fully supports the timely initiative by ORCHA to deliver a site where technologies that uphold standards can be found. This is a tremendous piece of work, well done!”

Two apps which feature in the library come from Big Health, which has Sleepio and Daylight in the library. Daylight was recently been made available to everyone working in the NHS to support their mental health during the crisis.

Big Health co-founder and professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, Professor Colin Espie, said: "In these difficult times, digital therapeutics can help to alleviate the overburdened NHS system, and importantly they can do so with immediate effect and at huge scale. This is because  therapies such as Sleepio are fully-automated and highly engaging, and deliver cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to anyone who needs it - today. Importantly, Sleepio is what we call ‘evidence-based’. This means that it has been the subject of an extensive clinical trials programme. In fact, 12 Randomised Controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that Sleepio reduces symptoms of poor sleep by up to 76%. We are proud to be included in the curated health apps within the ORCHA COVID-19 Apps Library. This is a wonderful initiative, and we look forward to helping users easily access safe, effective and solutions that actually work, and make a difference in their lives.”