There is an adage “Health is Wealth”, and it is completely true. In today’s time, we are so engrossed in our daily schedule that we don’t even get time to look after our body and its health. It is highly essential to monitor our health condition and visit the doctors in a period interval. As everything is going digital from taxi booking to buying groceries, even the doctor’s consultation has also gone online. In fact, in this pandemic where people are staying at their homes so to avoid any social contact, healthcare apps are like a boon for them. The digital wealth market is expected to reach a valuation of $206 billion by 2020.
In this article, we will know how to create a high-performance healthcare app that will also appeal to the users.
What type of healthcare app do you want to develop?
Do you know that healthcare apps are also divided into different categories? You must know which category you want to develop the app. The popular type of healthcare app categories are:
Emergency apps
As the name indicates, these are used by users in case of any emergency scenario. For e.g., if a user suddenly starts feeling bad or get unconscious or something else, he can tap a help button. The app will send a request or connect with the nearby hospital and its location will be indicated. These apps can save a person’s life.
Reminders or medication tracking apps
These apps are highly useful for those users who often forget their medication track or taking their medicines on time. It will help them to keep their schedule. Moreover, these apps also help patients track doses and regimens, so they always know what medication they should take, how many pills per one time, and when.
Healthy lifestyle apps
This category includes a dozen of different types of apps. Any which is helping the user to live a healthy lifestyle can come under this category. For e.g., pregnant women will require an app where she can track here medicines, doctors’ appointments, etc. While people who are on a diet need to know their fat percentage, carbohydrates, protein, etc.
EHR/EMR apps
EHR stands for Electronic Health Records and EMR stands for Electronic medical records. These are mostly used by hospitals or clinics for storing the data of patients’ disease of each patient and much other information. It is like an electronic copy of the complete file of the patient.
Benefits of Healthcare apps
Before going further let’s know how healthcare apps would be beneficial for you.
Better Efficiency
There should be no qualm over the fact that when things get digitized the productivity and the overall workflow speed gets an increase. Also, doctors don’t have to deal with a pile of documents due to digitization.
Saves Time
In the healthcare app, there would be a functionality of audio or video or text chat between the patient and doctor. This will save the time of both parties. Also, the doctors will quickly find the information they require.
Permanent Access
Patients will access to the doctor of the expertise they require doesn’t matter whether it is day or night. Hence, patients can find the answers to their queries using a healthcare app.
Reduced Costs
If the patients can get consultation sitting at their home then it will reduce the expense and help patients optimize all their expenses.
Higher Productivity
If the doctors will use the healthcare apps through their smartphones, or tablets, they would be able to resolve the issues faster and more efficiently.
Decision Making Becomes Faster
In some scenarios, the doctors need to check the complete history of the patient to prescribe diagnosis or medicines. A healthcare software development will help to determine what steps should be taken before it gets too late.
No distance restrictions
medicine, technology and healthcare concept – close up of patient with pills and water on table having video chat with doctor on tablet pc computer
Doesn’t matter how far the patient is from the doctor if both the parties have internet and a smartphone they can connect with each other.
Plethora of Features
There are a variety of features depending upon the app type in a healthcare app. The patients would be able to chat with doctors, monitor their diet, track their medicines, set reminders to visit doctors, etc.
Features to include in a healthcare app
Well, it depends on the type of app you are developing. But there are some basic features that you must include in your app. These are:
Geolocation
The patients or hospitals or clinics would be able to track each other’s location. Integration navigation services such as Google Maps will make this possible. With Geolocation, the patient can find the hospital in case of emergency or vice versa. You can use Google Maps or any other 3rd party service.
Scheduling Reminders
This is highly important in healthcare app. The patients must set reminders for taking their medicines, food, or visiting doctors.
Chat
It is an excellent method to provide communication between the patient and the doctor. The chat service would be helpful for the patient if they don’t want to disclose their identity to someone else. At Amplework, we are having expertise in developing Real-time chat with many different options.
Payment Gateway Integration
Obviously, the doctors will charge for their services and patients have to pay them. For this, you have to integrate a payment gateway. The payment gateway must be highly secure and reliable. It must be compliant with PCI-DSS standards.
Social Sign-in or Register
Users should be onboard on the app as quickly & easily as possible. With the social sign-in feature, users will find it easy to register and login to the app. Provide options for login and register through Facebook, Google, Instagram, or any other social media platform.
Push Notifications
Push Notifications are very helpful to remind the users for taking medicine or about anything else. These notifications will just pop up on the screen and users will get updated.
Chatbots
If there is any scenario when a doctor is not available at the moment, then the patient would be able to ask someone. Here Chatbots can help. The patient will ask a chatbot and will get a detailed response. Chatbots are usually enriched with machine learning algorithms, and they are improved continuously.
Reviews and Ratings
The patients must have an opportunity to give feedback to their doctor or hospital staff. This will also help other patients to find a good doctor on the basis of their ratings.
You should know that is not a complete list and there are a variety of features that you can include in the app development. Consult us to know what essential features will be required for developing an app on the basis of its type.
Legal and Security Regulations
In many countries, there are specific rules and regulations which a healthcare app must follow. It is because there is an involvement of the personal data of the patient including the payment details. This data can be even misused. Let’s know more about this in different countries:
USA
In the USA, the app must be compliant with HIPAA regulations. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA were introduced in 1996. It is a regulation in the USA which has now been promulgated in many other countries. HIPAA has provisions for insurance applicable to patients for increasing the app efficiency. It also comes with provisions for protecting the privacy of patient information and data security. If you fail to compliant with the HIPAA standards then you can face consequences from $100 to $50,000 per violation. The highest possible penalty is $1.5 million per year for violations of a given provision.
European Union
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is effective in European Market since May 2018. It provides basic rights to the users such as the right to information, access, rectification, erasure, restricts processing, data portability, object, and rights related to automated decision making and profiling.
United Kingdom
Healthcare apps built for the UK will require compliance with the Data Protection Act of 1988. This Act covers the most important guidelines and rules your healthcare software should meet.
Canada
Canada is also having its own security rules regarding healthcare apps. You can find the related laws and rules in PIPEDA, and this act regulates all personal data processing, including healthcare software.
PCI-DSS compliance
As we mentioned above, PCI and DSS are the security standards of payment processing. It is also crucial because there is payment functionality in the healthcare apps and they store users’ personal cards and other details. Hence it is vital that these details don’t come under the hands of any wrong person. Hence the payment gateway must be compliant with PCI and DSS.
Find an experienced mobile app development company
This is the core step of the overall article. All the efforts will go in vain if the healthcare app is not up to the mark. You must hire an experienced mobile app development company who is having experience in developing such on-demand apps. The app should have very high performance, a captivating UI and UX, and all necessary features & functionalities. You can search the companies on GoodFirms or Clutch and can select the company on the basis of its reviews and ratings.
As for Amplework, we are having expertise in developing apps for various industries such as Healthcare, E-commerce, Fintech, Proptech, On-demand services, etc.
Important things to consider during development
Here are some potential reasons for why some healthcare apps get failed in the market:
Poor User Experience
A captivating user interface is not enough. It can attract users but when they start using the app the app should work smoothly and intuitively. The users don’t find any difficult to find any action. Hence the UI and UX designers must focus on creating interactive UX and appealing UI.
Poor Developer’s experience
A healthcare app is not an ordinary app that a novice mobile developer can easily develop. It will require a team of expert developers who have previously worked on similar projects. If a software development company has no high level of skills in the development of the healthcare app, your app won’t become successful.
Non-compliance with regulations
Customers’ privacy is the utmost thing on the web. We have already mentioned it before that if the app is non-compliant with the healthcare laws of that country then it can face serious issues with hefty fines.
Lack of testing
No developer can develop an app without producing a single bug. Hence, it must be tested thoroughly. Even after the release, the user may find some issues, you must check them and resolve them in the next release.
