A health app can make cancer prevention easier—but this study suggests the people using it may already be the people best equipped to use it. That creates a troubling gap hidden inside a helpful tool. Digital self-care services may address some inequalities in access to health services.

But they may create other inequalities, such as disparities in the resources or skills needed to take advantage of these new technologies. That is why government, policymakers, and health system managers remain skeptical about their effects on quality, safety, cost, and inequalities.

The study’s objective was to compare the user profiles and the proportion of cancer preventive measures reported by digital health technology users with data from the general population in Romania. In other words, the central question was not simply whether digital tools exist, but who uses them—and whether prevention looks different for those people.

The digital health application estimates risk, collects previous screening data, and recommends examinations, tests, consultations, and lifestyle changes for cancer and other diseases. It works like a personal checklist, collecting previous screening data and recommending examinations, tests, consultations, or lifestyle changes to consider next.

The application’s privacy boundary is equally clear: it collects no personal identification data from the people who use it at all. The preventive screening tests recommended for digital health technology users were analyzed for men and women in each target age group.

These results were compared with data from the general population and were presented in tables covering the screening comparisons. For women aged fifty to sixty-nine, the proportion reporting a mammogram within the preceding two years was twenty-nine point three percent among digital health technology users, compared with two point three percent in Romania and fifty-two point four percent in the European Union.

Other breast cancer screening measures were lower than the European Union average, while breast ultrasound was used by twenty-two percent of women even though it is not considered a general screening method. For colorectal cancer, men using digital health technology reported several types of screening, including examinations of the bowel and stool tests.

These figures were comparable to the European Union average, but they were six times higher than those of the general population in Romania. A significant difference existed between digital health technology users and the general Romanian population in access to cancer prevention screening tests.

The digital health technology users were mostly women aged thirty to fifty-four years. Preventive cancer screening rates were two to six times higher in the digital health group, which was more suitable for internet-literate individuals with higher levels of education.

The study therefore points toward using digital health at the primary care level, so prevention can reach older and younger people with different levels of education and internet literacy and address health disparities. Digital tools were linked with much higher reported screening rates, but mainly among people already comfortable online and better educated.

To narrow the gap, these tools need to be connected to primary care, not left to self-service alone.