Things to know about a healthcare app development!
Are you looking for a medical solution or want to get some assistance. Here, we have summed up few things that are needed to know with “How to develop a medical app or a healthcare app?”
Digital evolution already boomed the world and touched almost all major industries. From food ordering to online shopping, everyone is using their smartphones to perform their day-to-day activities, even the complex ones as well. So, how can the major healthcare industry be apart from that evolution?
The healthcare industry is the one, who needed that evolution the most, as it can prevent major health hazards by just digitally evaluation of the patient’s condition or by general medication. Now a days, we can witness plenty of healthcare apps that are helping to achieve a healthier life by providing regular tips, monitoring physical activities, or tracking medical emergencies.
By influencing from the trend, several hospitals, medical professionals and healthcare institutions are adapting Healthcare App Development services and building their own mobile healthcare apps. These kinds of applications are connecting medical professionals with the patients directly and help them to achieve a healthier life with a better user reach.
Before exploring more details about the healthcare app development and the trends, first take a look at the current market stats. Also, realize the requirements, identify available types of medical apps, and figured out the major reason “why several apps failed without making a significant presence”.
Either you are a medical professional or a medical app development company, keep your eyes on a few questions before investing in healthcare apps,
- Why these mHealth app will be useful?
- What are the causes of failure?
- How many types of medical health apps are available?
- What are the essential features do these apps have?
- What are the clauses to run these kinds of apps?
Here, we are illustrating market stats, common types of applications, required standards or clauses and current trends that are needed to be successful in the highly competitive market. Let’s explore the market stats first,
Healthcare Market Stats
Mobile Healthcare Industry or mHealth has already witnessed a great boom in previous years and estimated to cross $32 billion dollar market by 2024, with a CAGR of 7.4% from 2018 to 2024. According to ortholive.com, there are more than 97000 health and fitness applications available in the market. While Statista stated that around 44000 apps are available on Apple app store in third quarter of 2019, which is around 45% of the total no of applications.
Despite this, Statista demonstrated the global digital health market growth by major segments (source),
Take a look at the major healthcare market stats,
- Around 52% smartphone users use health apps to collect health information.
- 32% of the world mHealth market is acquired by the hospitals, pharma companies, and healthcare institutes.
- Development companies and technology experts are representing almost 23% of the market.
- Users between 18-29 years age group already have health apps on their smart phones, which is almost 15%.
- Users between 30-49 years age group already have medical apps on their phone, which is almost 8%.
- 40% doctors believe that these mHealth apps can reduce total number of clinical visits.
- 25% of American physicians are already using these mHealth App.
- 93% doctors stated that these mHealth apps can improve patient’s health.
Why these mHealth app will be useful?
There are several myths and reasons exist that can encourage or demoralize you and force you to think twice about the mHealth apps use. The thing is you need to analyse these apps by yourself first. Here, you can explore why these mHealth apps will be useful,
- They can advise you about the nutritional diet and help you to get a better health.
- They will suggest a proper workout plan as per your routine.
- They can connect you with the professional experts or doctors to communicate directly.
- They will help you to get online prescriptions, reports and advises.
- They can provide a data bank to store, retrieve and access your medical records anywhere anytime.
- They can provide a relief in emergencies and connect you with the doctors with a click.
- They can notify and remind you about your prescription, reports, treatment, appointment, and other things.
- These apps will provide you a list of doctors and professional experts including their qualifications, work experience and associations.
- You can book an appointment of your preferred doctor directly through these apps based on their reviews and ratings.
- These apps can provide you the directions of clinics, and hospitals.
What are the main causes of failure?
There is a huge chance of not getting a proper response as you thought from the healthcare app development or your mHealth app. So, you have to be more focused and precise about the requirement.
Here, you can check out the major possible reasons why these kinds of apps failed to get proper attention and success,
01. Unclear Structure or Improper UX
User always comes first and so their experience. If any application fails to improve user experience, that will surely fail to get success. So, keep it easy with proper flow and better engagement ratio.
02. Complex Solution for problems
Keep it in mind, that a user always comes to find a solution not to entertain themselves. If the mHealth app can’t give a solution to the particular pain, then there are high chances of failure. So, choose a particular segment, and provide detailed solution to a particular disease or an ailment to assure success of the healthcare application.
03. Expertise and Knowledge constraints
Healthcare industry is based on satisfying advise and if the professional experts associated with the Healthcare Solution, aren’t enough knowledgeable in the field, the chances of failure will be high. Even, a human being always believes on the opinion of an expert who holds relevant qualifications, people reviews, and years of experience in the segment. So, keep the expert panel qualified, renown and recommendable.
04. Not following the Privacy Regulations
To ensure the success in this segment, you need to follow the HIPPA Regulations and country wide privacy statements.
How many types of medical health apps are available?
Healthcare industry is wider than we know and have a large number of sub-segments to produce better solutions for a particular health requirement, pain, or disease. Due to the multiple sub-segments, that’s a great opportunity for Mobile App development companies or individuals to highlight a particular segment and produce a functional solution.
Well, those sub-segments can be divided into 3 major healthcare app types,
01. Daily Health Applications
These kinds of apps are used to track and record daily routine activities to maintain body shape, sleep, nutritional needs, etc. without keeping your calendar with you.
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Here’s the list of features that those daily health apps usually contain,
- Monitor & track sleep (Quantity & Stage), and steps with an optional tracking of heartbeats, BP, pulse, fluid consumption, tilt swing and calorie counter.
- Analyse the data collected through routine activities.
- Push users to achieve their goals through instant notifications.
02. Hospital and EHR/EMR Applications
Hospital Applications
Specifically developed for a hospital to endorse their brand and connect with the users or patients directly. These hospital or clinic apps usually contains features like,
- Daily health tracking
- Notification based on the data collected
- Expert’s opinion based on the data
- Appointment facility
- Storage of EMR (Electronic Medical Records) and access of them
- Pill Reminders and Online Consultations
- Wayfinding Map
- One-click Ambulance
EHR Applications
Another variant of those are EHR (Electronic Health Records) Apps, where users can choose from a list of hospitals, or doctors and consult online. All other features are similar to the hospital apps. As an add-on those apps can have emergency mode, where user can grant permission to the consultant or public to access their record for a limited time frame.
This feature can save lives in emergency and help consultants to understand the case without any delay.
03. Medical Software
One of the complex systems to develop as this software perform tasks like symptom description, in-app diagnostics, and x-ray operations. Even these can be well-known online medicine applications, where user can upload their prescription and order their medicines online.
In such software, user can connect a device and diagnose their BP, sugar, and other diseases easily, but to develop such system, developer needs to be guided and tested through medical professionals. Also, these software needs to adhere several rules and regulations along with a complete guide or manual about the use as the living humans are testing themselves.
What are the essential features do these apps have?
A mHealth app should contain all major and essential feature like other mobile apps usually have such as: sign-in/sign-up, profile details, listing, etc. Usually those apps have a patient variant, a consultant variant, and HIMS to perform functions and connect each other.
Here’s the list of major features that those app variants have,
Patient App
Doctor App
HIS Dashboard
What are the clauses to run these kinds of apps?
Healthcare industry is a highly sensitive segment, and combining technology with this industry needs to adhere security regulations or privacy statements. These regulations are different for each country and developer needs to be aware about those.
A mHealth app must design properly and follow the regulations set out by the government authorities that ensures the privacy of information. Those regulations differ from country to country, have a look here,
The United States
Note: If mHealth app stores or transmitted personal health information, then it should compliance HIPPA regulations, else there is no requirement to obey HIPPA regulations.
The European Union
The United Kingdom
In the UK, your app should compliance the new Data Protection Act (DPA 2018) which set limits on the storage, and access of the information. The DPA 2018 also applies the GDPR standards with some modifications for financial services, academic research and child protection.
Canada
Asian Region
Countries in Asia, have come with several regulations in a “European style” privacy law. Several are obeying GDPR and some follows other. Japan has the oldest law in this segment “Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA)”, which was established before 2003.
In Singapore, Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) sets out some of the stiffest penalties in this segment.
Conclusion - The Bottom Line
Healthcare Industry has the high potential and opportunity for the app developers to be a part of billion-dollar industry and produce worthful applications that help to achieve healthier living. The industry already has a great number of applications of app stores and some of them are really good in both ways – user points and revenue point.
Take a look at the global healthcare enterprise software market, by region
Although, entering in this segment doesn’t ensure you the success, you have to know the reasons, clauses, and market trends that sets your path to the success. So, keep your eyes on market trends, user requirements, government regulations and the features of your medical health app.
We hope that the information provided above is useful for you. If you have any doubt or want to discuss more about your Healthcare app development or Practo like online appointment platform, feel free to email us at sales@rginfotech.com
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