Moreover, with a better quality of service through your healthcare mobile application, you can promote behavior self-management in patients. During this covid -19 pandemic situation, it can be the only best way to consult a doctor and get proper medical practices while staying at home.
Custom healthcare solutions can provide their customers with better convenience in fixing appointments, prescription and lab result reviewing, and online diagnosis from their homes. But the main problem with these types of applications is they are not able to match the patients' expectations.
The global statistics of app usage data state that among 400,000 medical healthcare applications only a few of them succeeded in this field. The successful application has less than 10,000 downloads through the app store. Moreover, people are also not sure about using the application even though it is provided by the hospital.
If you want to know more about healthcare application development and how to get success, please continue the blog.
What are Healthcare Mobile Applications and their Benefits?
Any mobile application which helps us to achieve health-related goals such as fitness, mediations, and a healthy lifestyle is called Healthcare Mobile Application.
Most of the people in today's life go through stressful work, unhealthy eating habits, and sleep disorders. Choosing a healthcare app service can guide you in a proper way of spending your day in a healthy and energetic way. Plus, it can also help you to solve various large and small issues with expert medical care. This can help to improve your lifestyle and lead a healthy life. All of this can be done by performing a series of actions and answering a few survey questions on your mobile devices.
A healthcare mobile application can provide benefits for both business owners and also the patients,
Benefits for the Business Owners:
- It is the easiest automated way to collect customer information.
- If your healthcare application is unique, it can attract many new users which gives you an advantage over the competitors.
- Your application can be the reason to improve and save many people's lives.
- You can gain loyalty from the users by providing them with proper healthcare services. Such as providing them with all the health-related information that they can get online and giving them the ability in appointment management and access to their test results while staying at home.
- You can save both the time and money required to maintain staff in a healthcare organization. Just you have to set up a clinic where doctors can interact with the patient through video sessions. Plus, you will have the ability to access all the medical history of the patient and can add it for future reference. So, as an owner, you can also save time and money that was spent on paperwork.
- You can create your healthcare application in such a way that it can notify the new user's daily medical news, promotions, and offers. This will help to maintain a closer relationship with the one-time clients. And turn them into regular customers who will use your health care services for years and recommend them to others.
Benefits of Healthcare Application for Patients:
- Patients are able to book appointments with a doctor easily.
- They can be updated with daily news and reviews of the upcoming drugs and vaccines.
- Can upload their medical history on the electronic media which they can access easily while consulting a doctor.
- Patients are able to consult a doctor and tell them their issues online while staying at home.
- Also, they can use the other services of the applications such as calorie count of the day and reminders for taking medicine.
Your healthcare application will be successful if you think of the profit for your business and also for the client. Creating software only for the sake of it will not do the work.
What are the Types of Healthcare Mobile Applications?
All the medical healthcare applications present in the market can be divided into 3 major types.
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Applications for Medical Professionals
The applications used by the medical professionals. In order to stay updated on medical resources, medical articles, and a list of the symptoms of the newly discovered diseases. Including other services like,
- Monitoring remotely.
- Communications among the professionals.
- Managing Appointments.
- Telemedicine
- Remotely conducted diagnosis.
- Applications for Patients.
The applications used by the people in order to consult a doctor or a medical professional about their health-related issues. Some of the features of these applications are,
- Scheduling and rescheduling appointments with the professionals.
- Mental health-related applications also include meditation.
- Lifestyle and fitness maintenance.
- Self-diagnosis by performing certain actions
- Caring for sick and elderly persons
- Keeping track and maintaining vital signs of patients like Blood pressure, glucometer, heart rate, and pulse, etc.
- Telemedicine
- Monitoring health forums and portals.
- Tracking the calorie intakes and calculator, water consuming reminders, and diet guide and tips.
- Assistance for pregnant women.
- Applications for institutions.
Mobile app development services are used for developing custom mobile healthcare app solutions that provide clinical outcomes and institutional uses to potential users. These applications also have some additional features such as:
- Electronic Medical Records and Electronic Health Records enabled applications for clinical assistance.
- Patient Engagement.
- Auto generations of the billing.
- Scheduling and rescheduling appointments with the medical professionals.
- Managing the inventory of a medical organization.
So, it is better to be sure of your goals and strategies before developing a medical healthcare mobile application. New and innovative ideas are always welcome in this field. As users will always opt for applications which can provide them with better and easy access to medical services at a reasonable rate. Plus offers and promotions on medicines can attract customers to your healthcare application.
Factors to focus on while Developing a Medical Healthcare Mobile Application:
Developing a healthcare application and designing it to fix particular issues can be challenging. So, you should focus on these important factors that help in patient satisfaction and achieving your business goals.
Here are the factors that you have to focus on while developing a feature-packed healthcare application,
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Data Security
Medical data is very sensitive and private information for everyone. So, it is a very crucial factor while developing an application that you have to focus. Plus, as a healthcare application owner, it is the responsibility of the organization to secure the data of the medical industry.
Storing the medical data on the device of the users might not be the best solution to this issue as it can get leaked. Moreover, using the application server for this issue will not help you. This is because the application server is for the speed and efficiency of the software not for the security of the data. If you are confused here are some of the features that can secure your data,
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Authentication
Implementing multi-factor authentication before accessing medical data can protect it from possible leaks. If anyone without authentication tries to access the application, then it will safeguard the data and show authentication risks. You can avoid the misusing of authentication as it can disrupt the workflow of the staff.
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Possible Penetration
Possible penetration can be done by hackers and social engineers can threaten your healthcare application's privacy. In order to avoid it, you have done a thorough check and eliminated any kind of security flaws present in the application.
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Encryption of Data
It is one of the safest ways to communicate through a secure channel. The data is encrypted to maintain confidentiality of the data. It will be best if you opt for end-to-end encryption so that the medical data will remain encrypted in the future.
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Regulatory Compliances
There are various guidelines and laws that you have to maintain while regulating medical data. These rules are dependent on location and the type of medical data. For maintaining these guidelines, you can opt for HIPAA, CDA, Direct, FHIR, etc for safe data exchange. Thorough research before developing the communication channel for the application is very essential.
Thus, for developing better security for the medical data of your application it is mandatory to hire a better healthcare software development service.
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API Components
API or Application Programming Interface is the bridge that connects the different software which is not related to each other. Implementing an API system to your healthcare application will increase interoperability and streamline operations.
First, you have to integrate the API with the existing healthcare ecosystem and with various third-party tools and services. This will ensure the exchange of data between the two different software's. And help you to reach your goal that is providing high-quality services to your users.
Moreover, to stay updated on the documentation you need the help of the developer community. And in critical cases, you might have to consider additional API support from different API vendors. Not all of the vendors support third-party services and tools.
While creating API documentation you have to focus on the security and privacy aspects. Creating a well-defined document is the only key here. And make sure the data can only be accessed by the doctors, patients, and the health insurance company.
Read the blog- 5 Powerful Cases That Prove AI Is Transforming Health-care Industry
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Compatibility and Interactivity
Compatibility and interactivity are very important factors for developing a healthcare application. This factor decides the ability of the software to connect and coordinate effectively with other applications and devices.
This is because hospitals or medical staff of organizations use various software and devices to diagnose a patient. Such as PMS (Practice Management System) and EHR, Scheduling applications, dermatological equipment, etc. So, your applications should interact with other facilities of the medical ecosystem effectively in order to obtain the correct report. Thus, adding a compatibility layer while developing an application can be a vital asset for your business.
Along with compatibility, you should also focus on the hosting of the data. Cloud computing benefits can give you the ability to host data on different servers. While providing high performance to the users and better uptime.
The majority of the issues like scheduling etc can be fixed by choosing a cloud computing service. But these computing services can be very costly, especially for new organizations in the market. So, hospitals usually opt for the less expensive traditional hosting methods.
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UI Consideration
UI and visuals are also some of the most important factors to focus on. Not only for healthcare applications but for all applications. This is because it plays a crucial role in keeping the users involved in the application. A healthcare app design must have better UI/UX that will always attract new users by providing a better user experience and interface design.
Nowadays most doctors and patients spend a significant amount of time in these healthcare applications. So, it is important that your application has a simple option with a better visualization.
In order to enhance the user's experience the visual should be harmonious with the target elements. Choose the fonts and colors of the application carefully, so that it can provide better readability. The user should be able to surf through all options without facing any lags. Implementing high-end visuals and other features which can slow down the application can drive away your users.
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IoT and Application Development
The medical Internet of Things (IoT) market is predicted to hit 411 billion US dollars in 2026 with a CAGR of 19% according to a summary of Reports and Data. Nowadays every person wants a healthier lifestyle. Which helps to trigger a hike in the global healthcare professionals and wellness market.
In these present conditions, IOT provides us a faster and better solution at reasonable rates. It can help people to save time by simplifying medical assistance and remote monitoring. Here are some of the solutions provided by IoT like:
- Sensors that are ingestible.
- Charting the different healthcare providers' options.
- Wearable Technology.
- Computer-supported technologies.
- Healthcare Interoperability.
- Hearables
Although these IOT devices provide the solution to complexities of different aspects of the medical field. They have to face a few different challenges such as,
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Security of the Data
Data from the IoT system is usually kept in cloud storage. In order to keep your medical data safe while using cloud functionality. Use top-quality data encryption technology and keep it updated to its latest versions.
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Data Overload
IoT devices and sensors are cables to produce a huge amount of data. So, you have to consider storage which can withhold that amount of data for an indefinite amount of time. Estimation of the required data size and storage is necessary for IoT devices. You can consult a data mutual team of expert and healthcare analytics solutions engineers skilled in cloud integration solutions that can help you to accomplish this goal.
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Integration of Various devices and Protocols
IoT has the ability to connect a huge number of devices as it is a very flexible system. It can communicate uniformly with any kind of system without any restrictions. Then also you should follow the HIPAA and FIPS guidelines and laws so that you can keep your medical data safe.
Expected Features of a Healthcare Application
People use some selected healthcare applications for their unique features and better customer service. The features mentioned below may vary. This is because the features of a fitness application and a medical application are not the same. But there are some common features that users expect for any type of healthcare application such as,
- Updates, notifications, and reminders for the day-to-day activities, calorie count, medicine, and water consumption.
- A better payment gateway for paying for custom medical services.
- Better compatibility with different wearables such as Fitbit, fitness band, or Apple Watch.
- Better tracking of the condition of the patients by monitoring their condition by themselves or by their physicians.
- Personal accounts for the patient so that they can have access to their medical history, health conditions, and a guide to improving their health all from one place.
- Personal account for the doctors so that patients can schedule an appointment with the nearest doctor available. Plus, from the same place, they will be able to get a review of the doctor.
- A better telemedicine functionality can help patients with the remote diagnosis. During to Covid-19 pandemic situation, people can go live to consult a doctor through video while sitting at home. Thus, the patients can get the right treatment during the case of an emergency.
- Reporting and charting functions can help to get the present statistics of the health conditions of the patient.
- Appointment scheduling with the available doctor through the application. This is one of the most common features of a healthcare application created by a skilled application development company.
Market Promotion Ideas for a Medical Healthcare Application
After the development and testing phase, your application is ready to launch in the market. You can launch the healthcare application on Google Play Store or on the App Store. You have to reserve 30 to 35 percent of the total resources for marketing purposes only. This phase is only to attract new customers for your application and increase your user base. You have to figure out the marketing strategy depending on the features of your application. And then you have to fix the mode of approach to the market such as B2B or B2C.
In order to ensure success in the market, you should have 2 major goals. Such as, enlarging the awareness of the brand and attracting new users for your application. You can achieve these two goals by,
- Advertising the uniqueness of the healthcare application on different social networks, PPC, and other advertising platforms.
- Participating and submitting your applications in Product Hunt. Were users can get information about your application
- Try to invest and focus on Social Media Marketing or Digital Marketing.
- Developing a better SEO-optimized landing page.
Always welcome feedback from the users after launching the MVP versions. This is because with the help of it you can modify the application according to customer needs.
How much Investment needs to create a Medical Healthcare Application?
The amount required to develop a healthcare application depends on many factors. Such as the complexity of the applications, compatibility of the application on different platforms, security protocols implemented on the applications, and server storage space for the encrypted data of the users. Along with this the amount of investment also varies in the case of existing corporate and features included present in the application. For example, a meditation application is a very simple application containing a minimal number of features. Whereas a telemedicine application is very complex and contains a greater number of features. That is why the meditating applications have less development team cost than the telemedicine application.
The cost of developing an application is basically estimated by the time required by the developers to create the applications. Usually, the rate of app developers starts from $20/hour to go up to $150/hour depending on the development service. Here is an example that can help you to estimate the cost of developing a fitness healthcare industry application,
- Creating an analysis of the UI/UX design of the software- 200 hours X $50 = $10,000.
- Development of the application for iOS and testing- 600 hours X $35 =$21,000.
- Back-end development of the application and testing- 400 hours X 35= $14,000.
- Total cost = $45,000.
This is only an approximate estimate for developing a healthcare industry application in case you outsource your development works. This amount also varies from developer to developer. As some SaaS development companies can take fewer hours to develop your application.
Conclusion
Developing mobile health applications can get you success in the present market conditions in the healthcare sector. Just you have to combine a unique idea with stable and feature-packed mobile technologies. Plus, you have to provide better customer service so that new users can trust your application. If you succeed to gain their trust you can have potential customers who will use your application for a longer time period. A mobile app development company can assist your healthcare management business to develop IT healthcare solutions that can help your healthcare staff in quality health access for elderly patients.
