The Reason Silicon Valley Hasn't Built a Good Health App (opens in new tab)

From my experience with a couple health related start-ups, I would suggest that the lack of good health apps has much more to do with the current state of the health care system, and less with entrepreneurs familiarity with healthcare. The main problems that make innovation difficult are:

1) Government regulations - healthcare is and has been an important political issue, and because of this there is a mountain of legislation that must be accounted for when operating in the field.

2) Healthcare bureaucracy - The interlocking relationships and ecosystem of healthcare from Patients to Doctors to Hospitals to Insurance Companies to Government is even difficult for insiders to navigate.

3) Fear of liability/litigation - Healthcare is a scary place for "bleeding" edge technology, and few institutions are willing to be operating there.

there needs to be distinction made between health apps and healthcare apps. FitBit, Jawbone, etc are health apps but are NOT healthcare apps. Health apps are great for optimizing health for those who are already into fitness. Healthcare apps have a better chance of reaching people who actually need it because they are used clinically, by those in the medical industry. Therefore, "normal" people have no choice but to use them if the doctor says they have to. And by healthcare apps, don't think about iphone apps, think about stuff like SMS, or automated monitoring, or remote monitoring through phones.

The fact is most normal ppl don't care about their health until they get a heart attack.

Yeap, it's really hard to create a succesfull startup when you're not your own client ;)