Who builds these apps, and how we decide what to build next
We get asked two things often enough that they deserve a page rather than a reply each time: who is behind these apps, and how does a condition end up getting one. The second question is the more useful of the two, because the answer is also an invitation.
Velora Health is a small team building iOS apps for chronic conditions, one condition per app. Eighteen are on the App Store, fourteen for people and four for pets, the first shipped in June 2026. We are not clinicians and none of our apps diagnose anything. We start an app when a condition has a real daily management burden, no decent dedicated tool, something worth tracking that changes a decision, and an outcome the person can take to their doctor.
Who we are, and what we are not
A small team of people who build software. That is the honest description. We are not doctors, dietitians or researchers, and you should hold what our apps tell you to that standard: they organise what you record and show you patterns in your own data. They do not interpret your case, and they never tell you what is wrong with you.
This matters more in health than in most categories, because an app that sounds authoritative can talk someone out of an appointment they needed. So the apps are built to point the other way. Every one of them ends in a report designed to be handed to a clinician, and several of them will interrupt what you were doing to tell you to contact one.
Why one condition per app
The obvious way to build this is one app with a hundred conditions behind a menu. We do not, and the reason is that a general tracker has to ask general questions.
A gastroparesis app should ask about the size of a meal and how long it sat there. A Raynaud's app needs the temperature outside and which fingers went white. A cat asthma app counts breaths while the cat sleeps. Put those in one product and you get a settings screen, a compromise, and a form that asks everyone about everything. Splitting them means each app can ask the six questions that matter for that condition and none of the ones that do not.
It is a worse business decision and a better product decision. We have made our peace with that.
The four questions we ask before starting one
- Is there a real daily burden? Something the person is already tracking, avoiding or worrying about most days. Conditions that flare unpredictably and involve food, weather or a routine are where a phone genuinely helps.
- Is the existing tooling actually bad? We look at what people use now. Often it is a paper diary, a photocopied handout from a clinic, a spreadsheet, or a general-purpose app being bent into a shape it was not built for. If a good dedicated app already exists, we would rather you used it.
- Is there something worth tracking that changes a decision? This is the one that rules out the most ideas. Data that changes nothing is a chore with extra steps. There has to be a plausible line from what you record to a decision you or your clinician would make differently.
- Does it end somewhere useful? Every app has to produce something you can take to an appointment and have read in under a minute. If we cannot picture that page, we do not start.
A condition that passes all four gets built. Plenty do not pass, and those are not failures of the condition, they are cases where an app is the wrong instrument.
What we will not build
- Anything that diagnoses. Not a symptom checker, not a probability, not a maybe. Our apps show you your own data.
- Regulated medical devices. We build wellness and self-management tools. If an idea needs regulatory clearance, we will say so rather than pretend the line is blurry.
- Generic trackers. The whole argument above, in reverse.
- Anything that needs your health data on our servers. There is no account and no login in these apps, and your records stay on your device. That constrains what we can build, and we would rather be constrained.
How the work gets funded
Most of the apps are free to use for the thing you came for, with a one-time purchase or a subscription for the parts that take more work to build and run. Where we can make a one-time purchase work, we do, because people managing a chronic condition are already paying for enough recurring things. The Diverticulitis app is the clearest example: the first flare is free and unlocked, and everything after it is a single purchase.
How to put a condition in front of us
Write to us and say what you or the people around you are managing, what you use now, and what it gets wrong. The last part is the most useful. A condition name alone tells us the topic; a sentence about what the current tool fails to ask tells us whether there is an app in it.
We read all of them. We cannot build all of them, and we will not pretend a queue exists that we are working through in order. But the questions above are the whole of our decision process, and now you know them as well as we do.
Frequently asked questions
Who is behind Velora Health? +
A small team of software builders making iOS apps for chronic conditions. We are not clinicians, and our apps are wellness and self-management tools rather than medical devices. Clinical decisions belong with your own doctor.
How many apps have you built? +
Eighteen health apps are on the App Store, fourteen for people and four for pets, with the first released in June 2026. There are also a small number of apps outside health that are not listed on this site.
Why one app per condition instead of one big tracker? +
Because a general tracker has to ask general questions. One app per condition can ask the handful of questions that actually matter for that condition, and leave out everything else. It is more work and it is the reason the apps are usable in ten seconds.
Can I suggest a condition for you to build for? +
Yes, and it is the most useful message you can send us. Say what you are managing, what you use now and what it gets wrong. We read all of them, though we cannot build all of them.
Do you build apps for other people? +
Yes, we take on commissioned work in this space, with one hard limit: we build wellness and self-management apps, not regulated medical devices. If an idea needs regulatory clearance we will tell you early rather than take the project and discover it later.
Where is my health data stored? +
On your device. The apps have no account and no login, and there is no server of ours holding your symptoms. Each app's own privacy policy sets out the detail, including the few apps that send something to a server to do work a phone cannot.
This article is about how Velora Health works, not medical advice. Our apps are wellness and self-management tools; they do not diagnose, treat or replace care from a qualified clinician.