The dangers of pregnancy apps Australian women have access to

While pregnancy apps say they act in ‘good faith’, a probe into the digital tools has found pseudo science and anonymous professionals lurk

Women using pregnancy apps are accessing misleading and inaccurate information online, while allowing their personal data to be sold off to third parties, a University of Sydney probe has found.

A review of the most popular global self-monitoring pregnancy apps in Australia found poor quality clinical content and some flagged as having false or misleading information.

Lead researchers at the The University of Sydney Corinne Caillaud and PhD candidate Natasa Lazarevic analysed 31 apps that met their criteria of four-star and above reviews on Apple and Google Play stores. They analysed the apps based technical and clinical usability, cost and time under requirements and app store ratings.

A dozen apps were red-flagged over claims of expert opinion that was not verified, and providing inaccurate guidelines for measuring body measurements or for having “stress-inducing” language.

One app, Pregnancy Tracker-Enes, included “irrelevant” features that let users get messages from unborn babies and read baby horoscopes.

“When an app said it was written or read by an expert and didn’t list who the expert was, that was a big red flag,” Ms Lazarevic said.

“Some would say … ‘You should expect this in this given week of pregnancy’. If a user read that and wasn’t experiencing that, it would be alarming.”

Self-monitoring pregnancy apps are useful in recording and but clinical content lacks.

The Hello Belly app had no accreditation or identification on several articles with tips and information, with many posts attributed simply to “psychologist, mother of four” or “consultant for breastfeeding, mom”. One post was attributed to psychologist Anna Belova, who described herself as an eye move­ment desensitisation and repro­cess­ing specialist.

The psycho­therapy technique has been linked to pseudo­science by medical journals.

A personal fitness “specialist in the implementation of good habits” recommended ­myofascial release to deal with spasms in calf muscles and pain in calves but the practice is regarded as an alternative medicine therapy with little to no evidence in support of it.

The app Nurture included a post titled Placenta on toast?, which discussed cooking and eating placenta or making art out of it.

Self-monitoring apps did perform well in categories such as cost and time, usability and technical domains, with features such as recording information, baby bump picture progress and goal setting deemed as useful.

Professor Caillaud said in their search of online stores, which yielded 12,000 results, “What we found is that often apps reinforce stereotypes, frame pregnancy that is all the time nice and very positive so there’s little room for those who may experience different types of pregnancies,” she said.

Through this scoping review, the women developed a digital health scorecard that ranked the apps in terms of how they performed in each category.

Those that performed best were Baby2Body: Pregnancy Wellness and Ovia Pregnancy Tracker

The worst performers were Pregnancy Tracker Week by Week and Happy Pregnancy Ticker.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists President Dr Benjamin Bopp.

President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Benjamin Bopp said expectant mothers should be cautious of advice on gimmick apps as pregnancy was “not one size fits all”.

“If you use your app as a memory aid or a diary, that’s great but you wouldn’t rely on them as an decision-making tool, you have to rely on a professional,” he said.

Director of enterprise at UNSW Cyber Nigel Phair said advertisers such as chemists and baby formula businesses could be among a pool interested in information input by pregnant women.