Mobile health systems (MHS) are one of the more spreading technologies in the field of medicine. However, identification of useful MHS is rather challenging. Few of them are, or could be, connected medical devices (cMD). Like other medical devices, cMD must be assessed to validate claimed benefits for reimbursement purposes. Clinical added value demonstration is a major criterion used to satisfy administrative requirements. With the increase of clinical studies that are including MHS, study registries can be used for insight into the type of evidence expected to become available in the near future.

In 2018, the French National Authority for Health (HAS) performed a review of registered MHS clinical study designs. The Clinicaltrials.gov database was consulted for all studies indexed with the terms “mHealth” and “mobile health” for the search fields “study title”, “conditions” and “interventions”.

Four hundred and fifteen clinical studies were registered. Three hundred and eighty studies were interventional with most comprised of a randomized study design (75 percent). Fifteen had a crossover design. Only few observational studies (n = 35) were registered. These mainly concerned (59 percent) patient use of an app on a smartphone without any other device.

Patterns of clinical studies were not found to significantly differ between MHS and other medical devices. Most of the clinical studies were randomized and specific criteria to assess MHS could easily be identified. However, specific methodologies for clinical development are not used in practice for cMD health technology assessment. In the absence of validated and specific methodology for clinical development, current methods that are being used in these ongoing studies will nonetheless be generating evidence for the upcoming years.