mHealth: Apps for labs and clinics
Scientists have not yet created the elixir of immortality or learned how to grow rejuvenating apples. Smartphones have spawned a new trend called mHealth. How to develop a medical app?
What is mHealth?
Before you decide to develop a medical app, let’s understand what is. Surely everyone understands this term in his own way. It is a term that refers to using mobile devices and wireless technology for the purpose of care, as well as ensuring a healthy lifestyle for people. The most familiar example of technology to many is a cell phone and tablet programs related to physical fitness (e.g., weight) or fitness monitoring. Is medicine a conservative business? This was thought to be the case until every self-respecting clinic began to decide to develop a medical app. As a result, solutions for better care began to appear on the market. Digitalization is a global trend that involves the creation of services based on digitized data. Such services help people cope with daily tasks without the help of specialists, quickly and at any time of the day. If there is a choice – to use a service or to spend time on “live communication” – more and more often modern people choose online services. So if you have decided to develop a medical app, it will be a great idea.
The global trend
In the US, this field has become one of the leading. More and more investors there decided to develop a medical app. Various developments appear on the market: from the simplest ones, such as making an emergency call to a doctor at home or in the office, to projects based on high technology (machine learning, neural networks).
There are several areas in which it is possible to develop a medical app:
– Collection and storage of various metrics of the user.
– Fitness apps.
– Maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
– Tracking the taking of medications, and treatment management.
– Projects for people suffering from a certain disease.
– Platform for interaction with a clinic.
How to develop a medical app and where to start?
– We answer the question of who we are: a center, a pharmacy, a community of doctors, etc.
– We answer the question of who our customers are and what tasks they turn to us for.
– To develop a medical app, which will become successful, find the real problem (in the language of marketing – pain).
– Create a service that helps solve that pain. This point is very important. To develop a medical app, which will be successful, start by solving the user’s problem, not from your relationship with him and your needs. And these problems are not obvious at first sight. But at a closer look, they are logical and simple.
For example, you are a laboratory that has decided to develop a medical app. Your clients are people who want to take tests. Not just for fun, but to check their own health and prescribe treatment based on test results. Taking tests requires preparation, but how do you prepare? Give recommendations for each test.
Then the results need to be applied. This means that the user should be able to read and understand the results, print them out, share them with the doctor in one click, and, of course, save them in history. And for some people it will be important to see a graph of changes in the test results.
What problems can you solve by creating a mobile app for your clients?
It is important to choose the main thing: why do clients choose you and how to increase the value of these reasons with the help of the app?
Clinic
Your customers are people who need a doctor’s consultation and qualified treatment. More often than not, people who are wealthy and willing to overpay to save time. This means that the opportunity cost of their time is higher than the cost of the center without the queues and medical red tape. The second reason may be the high qualifications of your doctors – that is, the availability of doctors who can solve their problems. It’s important that these values translate into the app.
Mandatory app functionality for such:
– convenient appointment to the right doctor, choice of doctor;
– saving the doctor’s appointments, for example, in the form of a table or calendar;
– Save the anamnesis and test results;
– the ability to retrieve them via the Internet.
Ideally, convenient interaction with the attending physician and administration via a mobile device.
Lab
Getting tests is an intermediate stage of treatment. It’s the results that matter, which means they’re worth focusing on. At the same time, not forgetting that the reliability of the results depends on both the preparation for the tests and the timing of the procedure.
Here’s what functionality users of the lab app need:
– test-taking rules;
– making an appointment to get in without waiting in line (if an appointment is provided);
– receiving and saving the results;
– convenient use of the results (send them to a doctor, print them out);
– easy viewing of changes in results (e.g., a schedule).
Pharmacies and Pharmaceuticals
Your customers are people with real problems that require urgent solutions. Often customers come to the pharmacy, bypassing the doctor and not knowing in advance what medication they need. For sellers it is a chance to sell more expensive drugs, but how to make customers come to you? The psychology of the modern consumer has changed – today they prefer to know why they go to the store. It is important for the consumer to be informed in advance, which purchase will be more profitable and efficient for them. And they look for this information on the Internet.
Therefore, there is only one way for pharmacies:
– Become a trusted source of drug information (directory);
– To make it possible to find out about the availability of medicines in the store;
– to make a pre-order and get the order in the store;
– Order home delivery, because if you are sick at home alone, it can be difficult to get to the pharmacy.
Health monitoring of loved ones
Appropriate for inpatients. Imagine an app where a relative could get up-to-date information on the condition of a loved one who was in the hospital.
If the hospital uses software to maintain the patient’s anamnesis, some of the data could come automatically to the personal account of a particular user.
In this case, the patient’s permission is required to share information about their condition with a relative or other loved one.
Help in overcoming a specific disease
A person confronted with an illness enters a new world. This is how a person who yesterday was healthy and led a familiar life feels, but now has to take tests, take medications and get used to a new way of life. An app can help a patient get into recovery mode at the lowest possible cost. There are clinics that specialize in specific diseases. These can be heart disease, oncology, skin diseases, gynecology, dentistry, urology, and others. For each category you can think of your own individual scenario.
What scenario to choose to develop a medical app?
There are many scenarios within which you can develop a medical app. It is worth starting small and common. For some facilities, several solutions will be relevant. Then the best approach is to create several products for different categories of patients and problems (if they solve different types of problems). Everything brilliant lies on the surface. A professional will help you see the solution. More often than not, it’s worth doing an analysis of your competitors, your target audience, and your niche in general.
Did this article help you? If so, please tell me in a comment what do you think about it.
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