Searching For Healthy Mobile Applications

This post was written by Ian Lopuch, Director of Search Marketing at eHealth, Inc.

These days it seems like everybody is creating a mobile application.  And, health related mobile applications are particularly popular. Last year, in a seven-month period, the number of health related mobile applications increased by 78%, from 4,921 to 8,770.

Health insurance on the go!

It’s hard enough to imagine sorting through 9,000 health-related mobile applications, but when you consider that there are now over 425,000 apps in the Apple App Store, the idea of finding what you need becomes even more daunting.

If these numbers scare you, have no fear. Our friends at Yahoo! just announced Yahoo! App Search and AppSpot.  eHealth has a long history partnering with Yahoo! Search Marketing (check out this recent Yahoo!/eHealth case study), so I can’t say we were surprised to see Yahoo! tackling this challenging problem with the goal of enhancing user experience.

And, the timing couldn’t have been better for us, because we launched our new mobile application, the Better Health Insurance Finder in September. The Better Health Insurance Finder allows you to research, compare, and start a health insurance application on iPhones, iPads, and Android mobile devices.

But, if you’re not aware of our new application, how would you find it? That’s where Yahoo! App Search and AppSpot come in. App Search is a brand new PC-based search engine and  AppSpot is a brand new app (iPhone and Android) that provides daily picks and recommendations based on the apps you have on your device.

So, if you wanted to find our mobile application, you would simply visit Yahoo! App Search and type in “health insurance quotes”. As you can see in the first screenshot below, Better Health Insurance Finder and other insurance apps are prominently featured. Once you have isolated the app you are interested in downloading, Yahoo! makes it super easy with its “Send app to phone” feature and also QR reader functionality (second screenshot below).

Alternately, let’s say you already have a variety of health insurance and healthy living apps on your smartphone. Simply install AppSpot and watch your recommendations. Sooner or later, it’s quite likely the Better Health Insurance Finder will show up on your recommendations.

Whether you are interested in researching health insurance or are searching for other healthy apps, we encourage you to take advantage of the new, exciting mobile technologies. With the multitude of available apps and Yahoo!’s new search functionality, it’s easier than ever to find the perfect healthy app for you!