Editor: What To Know
- If you also want to jump on the bandwagon and create a useful medical app that will help people or even save their lives, it's about time you learned which features actually define robust and effective healthcare apps.
- So, if you want to build a truly helpful and successful healthcare application, you need to include the features that your intended users are more likely to be looking for.
- Needless to say, the choice of features is largely contingent on your app's purpose, the platform you want to deploy it to, your budget, and other factors.
Healthcare Application
The notorious COVID-19 pandemic has reminded people how fragile they are and how important it is to take care of their health. It also encouraged developers to come up with more ingenious ideas for medical applications. As a result, the market has welcomed lots of new digital health solutions, lots of which have already become quite popular with healthcare providers and regular users.
If you also want to jump on the bandwagon and create a useful medical app that will help people or even save their lives, it’s about time you learned which features actually define robust and effective healthcare apps. What’s more, as a bonus tip, we suggest that you check out the list of the best healthcare apps available on the market today. Hopefully, they will inspire you and help you move in the right direction. And for more information about app development, visit a website that knows everything about building successful apps.
Must-Have Features
People download healthcare apps in the hope that they will help them solve their health-related problems, track their vital signs, keep fit, etc. Medical apps also go a long way in helping addressing healthcare facilities address their pain points and provide more quality services to patients. So, if you want to build a truly helpful and successful healthcare application, you need to include the features that your intended users are more likely to be looking for. Needless to say, the choice of features is largely contingent on your app’s purpose, the platform you want to deploy it to, your budget, and other factors. That being said, you want to make sure your solution incorporates a bare minimum of features that define a successful medical app.
Integrations
Today, developers take care to integrate their healthcare app with dedicated services that can gather and store data on patients’ health and activities. This data can be collected with the help of sensors built into users’ portable devices. So, if you integrate your app with such dedicated services as HealthKit, Google Kit, and the like, it will always have access to your users’ most recent vitals data.
If you design a telemedicine app, you also need to make sure it integrates with certified EHRs. What’s more, third-party integrations such as Facebook and email service providers also should be considered.
Profiles
As with any app, your medical solution should help users organize their personal information and other types of data. For this, you need to properly implement, maintain, and manage your user profiles. By doing so, you’ll ensure your users will be able to interact with your app smoothly, while your app will be able to collect and analyze information provided. Make sure both patients and healthcare providers can include as much information as required and easily edit it if need be. At the same time, refrain from cramming too much data into profile pages. Keep them simple, intuitive, and thus easy to interact with.
Telemedicine and Telehealth
Telecommunications techs have enabled doctors to diagnose and treat patients remotely. Lots of appreneurs have tapped into this trend and added essential telemedicine and telehealth features to their app to promote the delivery of clinical and non-clinical services. For this, make sure to properly implement such features as registration, personal profile, video calls, scheduling, notifications, internal data exchange, text communication, reviews, and others. For your telehealth app, you might want to include symptom checker, geolocation, prescription tracker, RPM features, and more.
HIPAA Compliance
With the rise of remote medicine and apps that make it possible, the protection of patients’ sensitive information became a top priority. So, your app should follow security measures and meet HIPAA Compliance. For this, it’s important to encrypt all data, ensure two-factor authentication is in place, and use secure connections. There are lots of other protocols you might need to follow to ensure your users’ sensitive information is safe and protected.
Bonus Tips
As promised, below is the list of the most successful healthcare apps you might want to check for inspiration.
For patients:
- Medical Id
- MyFitnessPal
- Apple Health
- WebMD Baby
- mySymptoms
For healthcare providers:
- UpToDate
- Epocrates
- Doximity
- DynaMed Mobile
- Medscape
