The technologies have truly shown their transformative power to revolutionize myriad industries and businesses across the word, empowering each process with speed, convenience and efficiency. By building custom solutions, mobile app developers have delivered high-quality apps for businesses in many niches.
Hospitals are no exception in this when it comes to experiencing the power of mobile technology. Hospital management apps can smartly manipulate complex data that stem from patient-doctor interaction and create an environment that fosters productive workflow and simplify real-time management of ongoing activities.
Medical apps, if crafted perfectly, can be an innovative solution to monitor health status, nutrition level, schedule a clinical appointment and access as well as share everything related healthcare system. This benefits both patients and doctors save time, improve service delivery and execute administrative activities properly.
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Here are a few essential steps to develop a successful hospital management app.
Determining The Business Model of Hospital Management App
Usually, medical mobile apps are divided into several categories depending on the hospital’s requirements and solution approach.
A hospital can have multiple apps based on their existing future business model such as:
- Clinical diagnosis and symptoms analysis
- Appointments Scheduling
- Medical resources and journals
- On-demand care/telehealth
- Informative: Lifestyle & fitness
Features Necessary in a Hospital app:
- Hospital Dashboard
- Patient portal
- Appointments management (booking, scheduling and cancellation)
- Analytics and reporting
- Electronic health/medical records
- Medication reminders and alerts on events/news
- Finding physicians and contacting a practitioner
- Chat and video conversation
- Wearable app support
- Prescriptions refilling
- Information about ER and clinic wait times
- Geo-fencing for push messages and maps near hospital premises
- Directional guide for user’s location
- Facility locator viewing
- Lab results/reports uploading and downloading (X-ray, ultrasound scans, MRI)
- Electronic transactions and payments
- Monitoring of healthcare aspects (weight, height, sugar and cholesterol level, etc)
- Emergency aid and on-demand assistance
- Viewing profiles, achievements and publications by physicians
- One-tap access to call or email services/specialists
Consideration of Several Categories
The primary stage of hospital management app development is to choose the category of the app you want to build along with project estimate and time it will take for the development process.
For instance, if your app is to focus on cardiovascular health management, many parameters will define its structure, including intuitive and seamless UX/UI, automation of process, inputs management, user guidelines and security compliance and more. Such critical app involves lots of challenges and brainstorming both from developers and hospital staff.
In addition, the features of the app must be handy and efficient and should be kept scalable for up-to-date assistance and day-to-day activities. Likewise, lifestyle apps can also be built albeit with simple workflow and in limited timeframe.
Design
In order to make Healthcare apps user-friendly, it must be built to offer an intuitive UI with seamless control and usability that results in rich user experience. Designing a healthcare app comes with its own challenges of processing sensitive data and giving users quality services typical of modern medical apps. For this, a lot of research and planning is required.
Design strategy for hospital management app should entail:
- Customer-centric features and uninterrupted performance
- Simplicity, security and usability
- Scalable ideas to address changing workflows
- Minimum delay in information delivery and maximum interactions
- Inclusive of user needs and choices
Development Process Scenario
Your hospital management app might be for desktop use or for mobile. It is possible that you already have a desktop version and would like to build the replica for mobile app. The technology stack required to sculpt an excellent mobile app with high performance depends on your platform of choice. The ultimate cost and duration are determined by these choices.
You also need to decide if you would like developers to build native or hybrid app for medical use. Or alternatively, opt for PWA (progressive web app) which trending due to its technical performance and ability to consume lesser space on the device. The decision is most likely to influence the project estimate.
For hospitals, to make the development task easier, finding a hospital management app development partner with trusted work record and experience is the best solution. The company you choose for developing a dedicated hospital app must have proven technical skills in the niche, prior relevant projects, knowledge about hospital system and policies and credibility to get started. Hire the outsourcing partner with these qualities and polished insight in the domain.
Wearable Technology integration
To enhance the reach of medical aid, healthcare institutes can also invest in IoT-powered apps that offer support on Wearable devices such as Android Watch, Apple Watch, fitness band, etc.
Equipped with smart tools, you can develop features that give access to health parameters such as heart rate monitoring, daily calorie checker, fitness trackers, pacemakers, sleep monitoring, etc.
There are many EHRs that prefer integrated Wearable technology that rely on sensory movements to monitor general as well as chronic conditions of patients.
Wearable apps can be built to cleverly exchange medical information of value with mobile apps that can process and display data records and reports in a comprehensive format.
Mobile apps with Wearable technology integration can enable interoperable platform and precise data monitoring for better care, health operations and patient engagement.
Data Encryption Practices
Data security is a top concern while working on a dedicated hospital management and medical health app. One must maintain its privacy policies and personal data security compliance as a primary priority when shaping the architecture of the medical app.
The best solution is using data encryption technology at all stages to protect and store and sensitive information. Encryption of data works by hiding the data and translating it into another cryptic code (ciphertext) which can be accessed by the person with decryption key or password to read its unencrypted form (plaintext).
Data encryption based on modern algorithm is the most effective solution to ensure digital data security and confidentiality across many IT organizations as the data flows from one computer system to another using internet network. The developers you have hired to work on your project should comply with latest norms and standards to ensure strong data security for patients and healthcare provider.
Examples of Hospital Management apps:
For your inspirational boost and clarity, here are a few great medical and hospital management apps running successfully by known medical institutes:
HSS Mobile: It is the official Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) App that has been awarded by the Healthcare Leadership Awards in 2011 for best mobile communications in medical world. The hospital is glorified as one of the country’s leading hospitals for specialties in rheumatology and orthopedics. Using the app, patients can easily get access to the information on their condition, find a physician and make a doctor’s appointment.
Nova Vita: Nova Vita clinic’s app is focused on building online services that facilitate electronic documentation management and level-specific access to different medical records for medical personnel and patients. It also houses an automated operating schedule for diagnostic labs and doctors to enhance the efficiency of healthcare providers at the center.
AirStrip: Basically a convenient digital interoperable platform, AirStrip coordination of healthcare across multiple care settings on multiple devices including electronic health records and information sharing from monitoring medical devices.
It enables access to all these essential details on mobile, computer and tablets from various healthcare centers. Hospitals can use it as a tool to compile massive data on one platform integrated with other systems.
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ZocDoc: ZocDoc is an award winning app that allows users to find nearby doctors, read their reviews and book an appointment with them. Patients can see open appointment times and fix one without making a phone call. They can also receive helpful notifications from its Wellness Reminders feature.
Meditech: The app allows healthcare providers to access patient records in form of web charts on mobile across many healthcare organizations. They can tap in to view patient’s lab results, recommend prescriptions, schedule procedures and appointments and track progress of current health conditions. The app also has a provision to identify patients at maximum risks.
Conclusion
This was an informative brief on how you can start developing the hospital management app from scratch. The overall cost of the process covers all the factors discussed above and more. It is advisable to prepare a questionnaire for an app development services provider you want to collaborate with before you start off on the project. Make sure you see creating a smooth environment for both doctors and patients as a fundamental to a successful medical and healthcare app.
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