Mobile application technology has brought great changes to several fields, including healthcare. Hospitals with mobile apps have been able to overcome all barriers, especially during the pandemic, when patients and hospital staff were able to interact through the virtual portal.
If you have a hospital and aren’t sure if you should build a medical app, you should consider it. But it would be wise to learn more about healthcare apps and their development before trying to build one.
For instance, there are several reasons to apply this tech, and you can actually save a lot of time and money if you build an app with the right healthcare app development company.
This blog discusses the benefits of having a mobile application for your hospital, the types of healthcare apps, and the essential features you must include in your app.
Advantages Of Having A Healthcare App For Hospitals
Convenient Payments
One of the biggest advantages of building a healthcare app for your hospital is that the billing system gets streamlined. An increasingly large population of patients prefers to pay their bills via contactless means.
Mobile payment options definitely save loads of time for doctors and patients alike. Neither of them has to worry about the security of these payment methods because the healthcare app development company applies stringent measures to ensure it. Patients can also claim medical insurance without having to endure the lengthy verification process.
Automated Queue Management
Waiting in endless queues is already inconvenient, but having to do so when we are sick is far worse. The best way to overcome this situation is by booking an appointment beforehand, which you can do through an app, and showing up directly at the scheduled time instead of having to wait in the lobby.
The scheduling feature can simplify things further by providing both parties with better means of tracking their appointments. This way, healthcare providers can manage time more efficiently and maintain satisfaction among patients while giving the reception staff time to manage their duties well.
Better Access to Healthcare
You can reach thousands, even millions, of patients through an app. This is especially true in bustling cities, where people may face problems locating the right physician or specialist. If patients have your app, they will be able to receive healthcare easily, depending on the features you include.
Quick Access to Medical Information
A mobile app can greatly simplify the process of accessing patient data. Not only will it improve the efficiency of your management staff, but it will also save time by reaching the database and retrieving necessary files effortlessly.
Nowadays, doctors and authorities don’t need physical access to modify the data in cloud-based EMR apps. When choosing the best mobile app development company, you can implement such functionality in your app.
Enhanced Management Efficiency
It takes a lot to run a large institution like a hospital. A mobile application can not only allow you to control every process in the hospital, but it can also improve the productivity of several tasks and boost the level of services. Ultimately, it can help you establish an excellent reputation among your clients and patients.
Beneficial In The Long Run
Clients always prefer easier access to facilities – healthcare isn’t any different in this regard. Aside from introducing simpler ways to provide and receive healthcare, it proves significantly to cost and time-saving, particularly in the long term. Therefore, the sooner you hire app developers and begin investing in an app for your hospital, the better.
Types of Healthcare Mobile Apps For Hospitals
Here are the most popular hospital apps available at present:
Informational And Referral
Such apps mostly offer general information. They can be used to engage patients by providing hospital information, such as a rundown of the services, virtual tours, and ER wait times.
A general app is useful if you want to promote your hospital, as apps are good at bringing the spotlight on branding and helping highlight the right message among patients and clients. That said, you can benefit more from the app when you focus on meeting patient demands more than selling your brand. For instance, you can ensure transparency in financial pricing and allow patients to rate doctor services.
On the other hand, referrals are useful for your physician teams by notifying them whenever patients request appointments through the app. Maintaining HIPAA compliance remains a must, however, and it is simplified through this process.
Hospital Navigation
An app to help clients and patients find their way around the hospital premises will be of great help, especially for large properties. Patients can locate departments, staff members, and doctors easily as well.
Also known as a way-finding app, it can include a range of features your staff can use to serve clients better. These include geolocation-based features like notifications, maps, messaging, etc.
Such an app’s main benefit is eliminating confusion among patients and helping them receive assistance as soon as possible. This is a crucial advantage as the patient may require emergency assistance, and the app can serve as a life-saver by speeding things up in such cases.
It also makes the staff more efficient and reduces chaos in hospital corridors.
Emergency Care
Building an ER app aims to help patients receive urgent care in the quickest, most cost-effective manner possible. Such apps include services such as directions to the nearest ER or Emergency Room, travel and wait times, and insurance-related services.
ER apps can prove valuable for your hospital for many reasons. For starters, an ER app can relay real-time data to users to help them make the best healthcare choices during critical times. ERs are better equipped and will most likely be available even when your doctor isn’t. Urgent care services are also faster and don’t require prior appointments.
Electronic Health Records (EHR)
EHR software is aimed at saving patient details, including their entire history, prescriptions, and other related information. Electronic health records generally contain detailed information related to the patient pertaining to their demographics, allergies, lab reports, and other medical histories.
Physicians with ready access to such records can work more efficiently and provide accurate treatment. Creating an EHR app for your hospital will also save you a lot of resources by substantially reducing the amount of paperwork and subsequent storage space requirements.
Medication Prescription and Tracking
An app that allows users to save their medical prescriptions, receive pill reminders, and receive accurate health statuses, is indeed useful. Patients who are undergoing treatment can benefit even more from it, as they may find it easier to stick to their prescription regimen.
The app will ensure they don’t miss another dose or meal if used regularly. They can also keep track of the intervals and the changes to their health and moods, whereas their physician can understand the patient’s response to treatment, successfully preventing medication conflicts.
Let’s not forget that most handwritten prescriptions are, in fact, unreadable. With a medication tracking and prescription app, you can skip the illegible scrawls and view clear, understandable electronic prescriptions.
Not only does this minimize the issues with unreadable handwriting, but it also gives healthcare practitioners instant access to their patient’s medication history.
Additionally, doctors are able to devote more time to patient care when they have an app that streamlines prescriptions and provides ready access to their patient’s medication history. The best way to achieve the latter is by integrating access to electronic health records.
Patients no longer have to worry about misplacing their prescriptions and paying multiple visits to pharmacies and their doctors just to have them rewrite all the medications.
Moreover, an e-prescribing system is designed to communicate with the pharmacy and share prescriptions directly. Since it’s now nearly impossible to lose a prescription, doctors can easily cross-reference and check the ones they need to prevent dangerous combinations or overdoses.
Top Features to Include In Your Hospital’s Healthcare App
Scheduling Appointments
This feature is essential as it enables physicians to give more time to their patients, whereas patients can book, reschedule, and cancel appointments according to their needs.
Profile Manager Or Dashboard
The user profile should be connected to a dashboard that displays information on everything related to the patient’s health. This includes a range of measurements, reports, and KPIs to help present a picture of their overall health at one place.
Notifications
A mobile app is incomplete without this feature. The app can send notifications to both parties when a patient books or modifies an appointment, and remind them of upcoming appointments.
Doctors can also receive updates of upcoming events and changes in the calendar, while patients can set the app to send reminders to take medication or reorder prescriptions.
Location-based services
Geolocation technology like GPS can be a great help to patients, showing them the best course to the nearest emergency clinic or your hospital. It can also help them navigate their way around the property through different offices and wings.
A combination of indoor and open-air maps would keep users from getting lost in the hospital once they arrive.
Accessibility
A hospital healthcare application must have accessibility features, allowing individuals with handicaps to use the app easily. Google and Apple offer multiple functionalities, such as TalkBack and Voice Access to improve accessibility.
Conclusion
In the above sections, we discussed the advantages of building a healthcare app for your hospital, the types of apps you could create, and the most important features to incorporate into your app.
The next step: choose the best healthcare app development company to help you accomplish this task in the most time-saving and cost-effective manner possible without compromising on quality.
