Searching the commercial Google Play Store and App Store is one of the most common strategies for discovering mobile applications for digital health, both among consumers and healthcare professionals. However, several studies have suggested a possible mismatch between this strategy and the objective of finding apps in physical and mental health that are both clinically relevant and reliable from a privacy standpoint. This study provides direct evidence of a gap between the five-star user rating system and expert ratings from a curated library of over 1,200 apps that cover both physical and mental health. An objective metric is derived to assess the strength of the user-expert gap for each app, which in turn allows identifying missed opportunities—low user ratings and high expert ratings—and overrated apps—high user ratings and low expert ratings. Implications for practice and care delivery are discussed.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into creative work continues to expand, yet its impact on human creativity itself—beyond simply providing ideas—remains uncertain. We reposition AI’s role from idea generator to idea evaluator, using trained models to provide real-time feedback on human-generated ideas. Across two studies—a preregistered online experiment involving individuals with varying levels of expertise (N = 554) and a large-scale naturalistic experiment during a year-long museum exhibit (N = 36,198)—participants generated solutions to real-world problems or created visual sketches. AI feedback significantly improved participant originality in both verbal and visual creative domains. Mediation analyses revealed these gains were partly driven by changes in individuals’ self-evaluation of their own originality, implying a key role for metacognition—the ability to monitor, control and regulate one’s thinking. These findings suggest that AI’s potential extends beyond generation to include idea evaluation, helping humans assess and refine their ideas through real-time feedback.