M-health: Challenges, Benefits and Key Features

Mobile apps are gaining traction in the healthcare sector, and exceptionally, people have started relying on digital means for their weekly and monthly checkups, for keeping up with their fitness levels, for their routine blood pressure, sugar readings and even for finding a doctor.

Having a service like Amazon’s Echo, which is a voice-driven computer assistant capable of giving a verbal account of life-saving instructions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, we are heading towards a better. Virtually connected world.

With the name, Alexa, this voice assistant works on the concept of artificial intelligence and has been trained by the American Heart Association. Alexa is further being trained on the skills of anticipatory intelligence, where it will act like your therapist and give answers to the various questions about general illness of children and adults. Also, it is expected to help doctors to take notes for the patient’s medical history and stats and to remind patients to take their medicines on time.

This indeed is nothing less than a dream, which has turned into reality with the best of mobile and internet technology. Technology has bridged the skill gap in healthcare and leveraged a centralized platform for patients, doctors, medical experts, hospitals, vendors and merchants.

Though healthcare has a number of challenges including regulations, government authorization, service quality levels, it has come a long way in the mobile industry, right from informative apps to fitness bands to healthcare chatbots. We’ve all bases covered.
Here are some of the challenges in healthcare industry, and the solutions we provide.

Consumers and specialists seem ready to accept digital products and services than they were a few years ago. Because this platform connects them well with convenience, avoiding the troubles of standing in long queues for appointments, visiting doctors for a routine checkup, for a minor cold and cough. Predictive analysis, automated diagnoses and wearable sensors have streamlined most processes for the old and the millennials.

Regardless of all the luxury, relief and advancements, small health groups are still not sure of having a mobile app. Maybe because they find it expensive to get an app built. Or because they are not sure about how should they start.

If you are one among them, we’ve some deeper insights into healthcare app development and how the app can bring you the right target audience and can make money for your business.

Where to begin?

Without a doubt, begin today. This is the right time any healthcare startup should opt for the mobile solution. Because if not now, then never. The current scenario has the best audience waiting for your app as majority of the world’s population have smartphones and a strong inclination towards mobile apps.

Before you hire an application development company like ours, there’s a bit of homework you need to do.

What areas do you plan to target? You should be clear with the demographics and the target audience, whether it’ll be just patients or a mix of patients, practitioners and medical representatives because the app structure and functionality clearly depends on the type of audience

Secondly, make a choice between the two most favored app platforms: Android and iOS. Developing an app for Windows or Blackberry is not worthwhile as the above Android and iOS share the largest markets worldwide.

But then, if you’re targeting North American audience, you should go for iOS while as more number of people own an iOS device in North America. Contrarily, if a business wants to cover the Asian markets, Android would be a preference.

Digging deep into the demographics and understanding target audience’s choices for a mobile platform can guide you with the perfect beginning.

Key Features of a Health App

Our development and business analysis skills can never upset you but offer the best consulting as to what kind of app will prove to be profitable as per the size of your business, dollars you are willing to invest, expectations you have from the app. Based on these results, we’ve prepared a run-through of the features that you, as a health app owner, can choose to include in your project.

Doctor profile and listings: Information about doctors- their specialization, complete profile including name, age, qualification, a picture, address and availability for an appointment (appointment hours). Further, details about a doctor’s professional certification, education and all niches a doctor serves in are also listed out.

Booking an appointment: This feature allows users to book an appointment with a selected doctor from the comfort of their home. If the doctor isn’t available at that time or the booking is full, users get notified and can try booking for another slot, the other day. Users are asked to enter their symptoms, name and contact number.

Pay through digital wallets: Integrating a payment gateway to allow users to directly pay through debit card, internet banking or digital wallets like PayPal is significant for the cashless economy.

Location-based services: An essential feature for tracking the location of the doctor. For a fitness app, this feature helps in drawing the running, cycling or walking routes, current or start point, which can navigate users to a clear running path.

Social network integration: With social network connectivity, users can connect with their friends on Facebook, Instagram, Google+, directly through the app and can invite them to the various fitness events happening around, share photos of the recent marathon they have been a part of and everything else.

For an app owner, a social login integration can be useful in collecting and storing the data of users, their likes and preferences, whether they love to follow diet and fitness posts, pages and so on.

Push Notification: You can provide a personalized experienced to each user by sending notifications regarding the events, upcoming workouts, doctor’s seminars and talk shows in accordance with the likes and preferences of each one of them.

Review and feedback: Acknowledging user’s words is a great way to make them feel special and connect with them. Their feedback towards your app services, for a particular doctor, can help you keep improving and gaining the loyalty.

In addition to these must-have features for a health app, app owners can look further to stand out from the basics and include some additional features like voice commands, workout planning, calorie counter, nutrition plan, healthy recipes with voice commands, workout music playlists and much more, depending on the budget and time they can afford to invest.

Besides, app design is also a game-changer in increasing the number of downloads and number of active users. Irrespective of the app’s advanced functionality, if the interface, UI/UX design is not simple and fluid, the app won’t be a success and will be deleted in a week or before by the ones who downloaded it.

If it’s difficult for the people to understand the flow of the app, it won’t last long. Of course, you won’t be actually working on the execution of the app. So, the next step is to find a reliable and professional app development partner- a freelancer or a full-scale agency (which is preferred, though) to get a unique and feature-packed health app solution.

If you haven’t found one yet, don’t look further. We can build expert solutions for you, with an extra edge of creativity and personalization. With us, you can have the liberty to control the development process, share your innovative ideas and be an active part of the development process, keeping your mind free from all the technical elements.