Searching for health and fitness apps on the iTunes app store turns up approximately 2,200 results. There are calorie counters, activity trackers, heart rate monitors, virtual fitness coaches and every other conceivable permutation.

The quantity should grow even larger thanks to Apple’s latest product release, the Apple Watch, a wrist wearable computer that tracks health and fitness information. One question, though: Are the users of these apps any healthier as a result?

The answer is still a definitive no, despite the potential of the quantified self movement and wearable trackers. At this point, I might regurgitate statistics on heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity, but they would come as no surprise to health care industry insiders. The same is true of health care costs, which are clearly unsustainable.

Bottom line: We are in the midst of a chronic disease epidemic, apps haven’t moved the needle, and we need to build better systems to fix it.

Why apps fall short

The abundance of health and fitness apps is a testament to market demand. People want to find the right tools to improve their health by losing weight, lowering their blood pressure or achieving some other elusive and measurable health goal.

Once the novelty has worn off, however, various studies indicate as many as 40% of individuals will abandon use of those apps. Worse, the individuals suffering from chronic diseases who need this technology the most are mostly not using it, and the remaining are not deriving any real health benefit.

Mobile health apps do little to make the deluge of data meaningful. People need actionable information, and they are just not getting it.

As a cardiologist, I have been trained to respond to disease. Patients with high cholesterol receive a statin. Those with angina receive a stent. People with failing hearts receive defibrillators. While the benefits of defibrillators are incontrovertible, we can’t say the same for statins and stents.

To date, there is no evidence that stenting prolongs life for those not experiencing an acute coronary event. Further, we must treat nearly 80 people with a statin to prevent one death. Then there are the numerous side effects, such as bleeding, stroke, myalgias and myositis that accompany these potential interventions.

Prevention’s value proposition

Prevention data tells a far different story. To prevent a single death, we only need to move five high risk people from low to high fitness levels. And the major side effect is improved muscle tone.

I am not advocating we stop using transformative therapies like stents to statins. I am simply pointing out that 80% of heart disease cases are preventable. We spend $1.8 trillion health care dollars per year on preventable, chronic diseases; however, we are dead last in the developed world in quality, access, efficiency and other key metrics.

Patients are having great difficulty incorporating preventive measures into their daily lives. We –clinicians – have to help them integrate data from apps, digital devices, blood work, genomic reports and other sources to provide actionable information.

Our future economic and global competitiveness depends on disease prevention. The current, reactive approach to treating preventable disease is just not getting the job done. For digital health to mitigate the burden of chronic disease and the cost of treating it, we must add the element of design.

Digital health network

Who is going to design better preventive regimens?

Primary care physicians simply do not have time to offer this level of service. What we need is a new medical specialty in digital health that is focused on preventing and reversing damage from chronic diseases, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and hypertension.

We must implement care teams that include physician extenders, such as registered dietitians, fitness professionals, nurses and medical assistants. Experts who understand human behavior and can help patients embrace better fitness and nutrition.

This team will work with patients to integrate health data and create personalized action plans, clarifying health choices in the same way a financial planner facilitates stock picks — by using integrated data to make smarter choices.

More important, the digital health team will provide follow-up and coaching to encourage patients to stick with their plans. This approach creates value where none existed before and the result will be real health outcomes.

This is not an abstract discussion — people are dying and debilitated from conditions that are imminently preventable.

A virtual goldmine

Some may argue that a digital health care network will be too costly, but this completely overlooks the economic realities. Under the current, reactive model, health care costs are increasing two percent faster than economic growth. By shifting resources from treatment to prevention, we save money, but even more importantly, we save lives.

From a payer perspective, this is a virtual goldmine. The investment in a preventive, digital health network would be more than offset by fewer prescriptions and eliminated hospital stays. We achieve better health and reduce costs. In addition, we give patients what they really want: a transformative health care experience that actually leads to better health.

Samir Damani is a cardiologist and founder and CEO, MD Revolution. This article originally appeared in athenahealth’s Health Care Leadership Forum.