Healthcare apps and their functions
Among the different types of modern apps, health applications are one of the popular. Lockdown was also a trigger for many hospitals, clinics, and other health organizations to get a customized privation for their needs or to improve the functionality of the existing one. There are a lot of visible benefits patients, and hospitals get when the applications are launched. For hospitals, it’s always about reducing their operational costs.
For clients, the main benefit is the easier accessibility of the healthcare services they might need. Healthcare apps are designed by healthcare app development companies to help patients establish a connection with their hospitals and get 24/7 assistance and supervision in the process of treatment. Wellness apps are designed by the companies for the purpose of improving the general lifestyle of the users, as they provide different tips on how to improve the health conditions and postpone the necessity to address hospitals.
1) The purpose of healthcare and wellness apps
If you are only planning to order an application for your business, take a look at the main purposes of the health apps and the needs of clients they can cover:
– Fitness and nutrition apps
The apps of this type are used to check the calories in different foods, plan the exercises, and they usually provide a lot of tips on a healthy lifestyle. Many of them are of general use. Some of the apps are customized for more specific purposes, like keeping fit for people after 60.
– Emotional wellness app
These apps teach users the main ways to avoid and control stress and provide tips on relaxation, meditation, and different pieces of training for emotional stability.
– Water intake apps
Along with sleep cycle apps, water balance applications have become extremely popular nowadays. They calculate the needed amount of daily water intake due to the health conditions and physical parameters of the user and send alarms each time you must drink water.
– Appointment booking apps
Many clinics and hospitals provide their clients with an ability to set an appointment with a certain doctor via their own mobile application, or the applications that provide multiple choice of hospitals and specialists within a specified area.
– Health data apps
In many laboratories and diagnostic centers, you don’t have to wait to get the results of the tests personally or via email. You just sign in to their application and get your personal records uploaded and stored there.
– Patients community apps
There are a lot of community apps where patients can share their tips on treatment, recommend specialists, discuss the effectiveness of different medicines for similar cases, and simply support each other in difficult health situations.
– Medicine purchase apps
There are a lot of mobile applications that provide booking services for the medicine, find the drugs you need in the pharmacies nearby, compare the prices. So, it this way, having a prescription, you can upload it, and get your medicine online.
– Medication intake management
In out-patient conditions, especially in the cases of the dependence of the patients on systemic medicine intake, medication management apps are very effective. They send reminders for medicine intake and give a possibility to track the treatment process based on provided details.
– Apps for special health conditions
Patients with diabetes can download different mobile applications to control their blood sugar and manage insulin intake during the day. The same is about patients with heart diseases, as via specific applications they can collect the heartbeat rate using smartwatches, and manually enter other related data to control their state.
2) Necessary features of the health apps
In the case of health apps, for custom mobile app development, you must think about the main features your future app must have to be useful for the clients and patients. So, before addressing a developer, think about what expectations and needs the potential users can have, not to miss anything really vital. Among the most widespread features mobile health apps possess are the following:
– Communication functions: chat, video and audio calls, e-consultations
– Synchronizing with other digital devices
– Appointment options with up-to-date information about a specialist’s availability
– Calculator for calories, weight, blood sugar rates
– Hearth rate tracking
– Alarms and reminders for medication
– Detailed profile settings
– Searching, filtering. and search results customization
– Online medicine prescription
– Data uploading and storage
– Analytical mechanisms for treatment dynamics
– Pre-diagnosis symptom analysis
The application you are planning to get must be equally available for different platforms. It should not be very heavy to be available with any Internet connection speed. Think about its functionality offline. In many cases, the patient must feel comfortable to enter new data and analyze it without the need to be online.
Try to predict all the possible difficulties your clients may face in the process of usage. Test your application in advance to avoid patients’ switching. It’s easier to engage patients with a comprehensive and user-friendly app once than to re-engage them if they were not satisfied after the first use. Of course, you can go to the source and analyze how to bring your users back if now you are trying to improve the existing app. The application must be functional, and only then fancy. Make it accessible for all age groups, people with disabilities, and those users who are not real fans of new technologies. More functionality within fewer clicks should be your goal.
The list of the functions you want to include should be complete enough to cover all the needs of your patients. The app must load fast, and process the big pieces of data quickly on any kind of device model. So, too heavy programming should be avoided too. The app must be easily updated, and at the sad time easily installed on previous gadget versions. Add only those functions that are needed, and name them properly to avoid confusing your users.
