Importance Of Mobile Apps In Healthcare Industry
When we talk about the evolution of technology, we generally tend to limit our discussions to how gadgets have become faster, more portable, how they’re changing industries and the likes.
We usually fail to acknowledge how technology has empowered people across the world. From online shopping to entertainment, tech has turned users into informed consumers.
This is especially true with healthcare as technology through the form of mobile apps have not only enabled users to become more informed about their body, ailments and conditions but make wise decisions treating and taking care of them, too.
To put this in perspective, let’s just understand that there are over 318,000 healthcare apps available on major app stores. With over 80% of the US population owning a smartphone, 60% of them download and use healthcare apps on their phones.
Not just that, 90% physicians use their phones and apps at work to perform several healthcare-related tasks and in a survey of medical schools students and HCPs, about 80% users using mobile devices to communicate with colleagues about patient care via e-mail, telephone and text messages.
This means that the onset of apps is nothing less than a revolution in the healthcare sector. But before we get deeper into their advantages to doctors and patients, let’s understand what healthcare apps are.
What Are Healthcare Apps?
Healthcare apps are those that provide health-specific services to users from their smartphones, tablets or wearable devices. For comprehension purposes, you can classify healthcare apps into the following:
1. Health Report Access Apps
Devices like smartwatches and Fitbit connect to your smartphone via BlueTooth. When you wear them, these devices consistently keep track of your body’s vitals such as heart rate and pulse.
With data analytics, these apps also give you crucial information on your body’s functioning, suggesting you check-ups and other specific remedies depending on your health history. If you didn’t know, there have been cases where smartwatches have predicted heart attacks in users.
2. On-Demand Healthcare Apps
These apps connect doctors and patients over a reliable ecosystem. Such apps allow you to list physicians and doctors in your vicinity, chat with them for your symptoms, get recommendations, fix appointments over apps, share your medical history or electronic health record digitally and do more.
Besides these, there are also pharmaceutical apps that allow you to identify the authenticity of your medicines as well.
Read more: Types of On-Demand Delivery Applications
What are the Benefits of Mobile in Healthcare?
Like any other field, the implementation of technology in the healthcare sector has only been offering advantages to both doctors and patients. Apart from them, technology has also streamlined processes and workflows in hospitals, where patient management is vital.
With decentralized systems and apps, hospitals can now seamlessly manage patient history, treat emergencies, plan evacuation strategies, manage beds and wards, perform operational tasks like setting work rosters and do more.
However, to not overwhelm you with information, let’s just look at the benefits offered by healthcare apps to doctors and patients.
Read more: How to Design Healthcare IoT Products, Patients can Embrace
How Doctors and Nurses Benefit from Healthcare Apps?
1. Simple Ways to Retrieve Patient History
To start with a statistic, over 94% of surveyed doctors believe that healthcare apps can bring about significant improvements in patients’ health conditions. Proper diagnosis starts with doctors and physicians understanding a patient through their health record.
From maintaining files and chunks of paper offline, doctors can now have a patient’s entire health history stored over the cloud. They can pull out the information whenever they want and diagnose patients depending on their records.
Because these records are updated with the smallest of details like patients’ allergy to certain medications and more, a better healthcare delivery can be impacted by doctors. And because the details are precise, patients can get diagnosed from anywhere across the world.
2. Remote Diagnoses
Going a step ahead with getting a diagnosis from anywhere across the world, today’s technology also paves the way for remote consultation. For instance, if your family doctor is away or you’re miles from your doctor, you can use healthcare apps to send symptoms to them and get a preliminary diagnosis. With healthcare apps of today, doctors can seamlessly access soft copies of X-Ray reports, tests, MRIs, ultrasound and prescriptions from one single dashboard.
So, tech not only makes retrieval faster but diagnosis more precise as well.
Read more: 5 Reasons How Native Mobile Apps are bringing revolution in Healthcare Industry
How Patients Benefit from Healthcare Apps and Save Money?
1. On-Demand Healthcare Apps Helps
With technology, gone are the days you need to call your doctor’s assistant to fix an appointment, reschedule or cancel one. Today’s apps allow you to find specialists in your area and fix an appointment with one tap. You can choose the date and time and get insights on their availability as well.
Besides, there are even reviews on doctors and clinics to help you get a better idea if you’re stepping into a right place. This is beneficial if you’ve recently moved to a city or staying away from your hometown for some official purposes.
Furthermore, healthcare apps also offer services like direct video chat facilities with specialists and doctors. Patients can pay a fee to avail this service and have a one-to-one interaction with doctors from wherever they are. These are crucial during epidemics and viral outbreaks.
2. Easier Payments and Reduced Bills
One of the major advantages of healthcare apps is that they’ve transformed people from being in line to getting online for their payments. With integrated payment gateways and digital wallets, clinics and hospitals can raise an invoice and a payment link. Patients can easily click on the link and pay for their expenses through apps.
Further, some popular healthcare apps also offer discounts for using their services for retention purposes. They have discounts, coupon codes and referral schemes, where people can get additional savings on their treatments. And because most of the redundant tasks hospitals and clinics do are automated, a few aspects of bills get automatically reduced as well.
Benefits Of Mobile Apps In Healthcare Industry
Apart from these specific advantages apps offer in the healthcare sector, these are the other benefits:
- Recommendations of allied healthcare services like health insurance services and more
- Personalized suggestions of diet and nutrition depending on a diagnosis
- Ownership of individual health and personal monitoring
- Sort and filter options to look for specialists like neurosurgeons, ophthalmologists and more
- Optimized communication between doctors and patients
- Reminders for medicines and doctor appointments
- E-prescriptions
- Higher accuracy of diagnosis and more
Popular On-Demand Medical Apps for Android and iOS
Read more: 5 Ways Alexa Is Going To Turn Around Healthcare Industry
Wrapping Up
By now, we’re sure you understand the power of technology in the healthcare sector. Apart from offering optimum convenience, these apps are saving lives on a daily basis. These apps are the unsung heroes of today that are silently doing their jobs. So, if you intend to make a difference in the world especially through healthcare, we recommend developing a healthcare app.
To understand how you can go about developing it, taking it to the market and making the way for revenue, get in touch with us today.
Originally published at https://www.techtic.com on February 25, 2020.
