Pocket-friendly Injury Prevention Apps on your mobile

The advance of handheld and portable technology is reaching new levels. Not only can we now use devices to make calls, surf the web and follow social media there are an ever increasing number of applications (apps) available for most aspects of day to day life. Of these, there is an emergence of apps which claim to help prevent injuries occurring, whether sport related or not.

A recent review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) has evaluated the content of such applications which can be downloaded via I-Tunes for both I-Pad and I-Phone and has appraised their worth against current best scientific evidence.

From their review they included 18 apps in total. Of these, only 4 provided information which could be supported by scientific evidence. In addition, 5 apps made false claims. There certainly is a great value to sports and physical injury prevention apps and at present there is now a gap in the market for more to be developed based on sound clinical evidence.

For the mean time, our advice is to be careful in choosing and downloading injury prevention apps; not only will they take up more memory on your device but they could also be providing false information. Applications never replace the guidance from a professional, and should you require help it is always best too seek the opinion of a Chartered Physiotherapist or a GP.

If you would like to find out more on how to prevent an injury or indeed manage a current one, please call our Physiotherapists at Lilliput Health in Poole today on 01202 725090.