There has been a rapid rise in the health sector in recent years. Gone are the days when people use to book appointments with physicians for routine checkups and consultations. With real-time video chats, people easily connect with their doctors from any part of the world.
Although healthcare digitalization brings tremendous benefits to the patients, it also eases hospital administration like a hospital waiting time management to provide better care to their patients in a more time-efficient manner. mobile app development chicago are already using the latest tools, technologies, and methodologies to integrate modern features and functionalities into their mobile applications. It is this integration that is giving their mobile applications a competitive edge.
There are numerous factors that bring this massive change in the digital healthcare system from the traditional structure. However, we're only listing the two most important factors that made the most impact on the digital transformation, i.e., Healthcare app development features and challenges.
We will dig deep into both these factors.
Healthcare App Development Features
1. Health Tracking
Health tracking is most definitely one of the critical feature healthcare apps offers to both patients and doctors. This feature allows doctors to view patients' medical conditions, including pulse rate, blood sugar level, blood pressure, calorie intake, and so forth.
2. Appointments
This is another vital feature that a mobile healthcare app offers for patients. This feature enables the patients to book an appointment with their desired physician. At the same time, physicians can also view the number of appointments they have for the day. One major advantage of this feature is that it eliminates the waiting time process in the hospital.
3. Making Schedules And Reminders
This feature makes a daily schedule and reminders for the patient. It helps them remember to take the medicines on time, track their daily calorie intake, remind them to drink water, and track their sleeping schedule. In this way, patients can easily track and improve their health.
4. Patient Information Database
This feature is quite useful for hospital administration and doctors alike. It allows them to keep and maintain a proper health record, including health reports, prescriptions, history, etc., that in turn help provide better care to their patients.
5. Geolocation
The geolocation feature is mainly used for emergency purposes for patients who need medical attention. With this feature, they can easily find doctors near their current location and get prompt medical care.
6. Real-time Chats
Real-time chats become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. In almost every part of the world, where quarantine and social distancing are implemented, medical care can only be given via online chat. Patients can interact, seek guidance and get a consultation from their physicians from the comforts of their homes. The feature includes text chat, voice, and video calls.
7. Payment Gateway
This feature is integrated with net banking, debit/credit cards, and wallets to pay for the consultation and other medical care fees. It's also integrated with documentation access and bill copies.
8. Ratings And Reviews
When there is a myriad of physicians available for consultation, it's quite hard to find the one that offers the most effective treatment to patients. This feature comes in handy; now, healthcare apps have ratings and reviews of doctors and physicians that make it easier for the patients to find the top doctors to treat them.
9. Cloud Integration
Cloud integration is a must-have feature in the healthcare sector. There is a plethora of patients' data, and they have to be stored in a secure cloud infrastructure.
10. Reporting And Analytics
Last but not least is the feature of reporting and analytics. It creates a dashboard for hospital administration to track and monitor every data of their patients. That includes tracking patient's health, finances, patient count, and other critical factors related to healthcare.
These features are made possible by following the latest trends and overcoming many challenges in the healthcare industry. However, even after making technological revolution in healthcare and there are still challenges that remain to be addressed.
Challenges Of Healthcare App Development
1. Following The Compliance And Regulations
Adhering to the regulations and compliance is one of the major challenges for mHealth apps. Every major country established its own regulations that the mHealth app has to follow.
The following are the countries and their standards and regulations that you need to follow if you want to launch a mHealth app in their regions
- The USA –HIPAA and PHI, CCPA, NIST, and GDPR rules.
- Canada – PIPEDA guidelines.
- The United Kingdom – NSCS guidelines.
- European Union – GDPR rules.
Thus, it becomes a major challenge for a mHealth app to follow all of these countries' compliances.
2. Interoperability Of Multiple Devices
As the number of mobile devices keeps growing in the healthcare sector, including smartphones, wearable devices, smart TVs, and so forth. It's also becoming a great challenge for these devices to interoperate. Moreover, security is another challenge when patients and doctors interact with one another using different mobile devices.
3. Lack Of Security
mHealth apps are prone to cyberattacks that compromise the hospital's data of patients and administration. Generally, security is considered the top-most priority. Still, rarely any healthcare organization actually makes an effort to secure their mHealth apps.
Even though following the compliance and rules are able to secure the mHealth app to some extent; however, it all comes down to a healthcare organization following the security-first model.
These are some of the challenges in mHealth app development that hinder reaching complete digitalization. Nonetheless, many healthcare organizations are striving towards overcoming these challenges.
Conclusion
Well, these are an overview of both features and challenges that healthcare organizations face in mHealth apps.
If you want to invest in this industry, your next course of action should be hiring a professional healthcare app development company to help you realize your dream mHealth app.
They will also enable you to overcome the challenges in mHealth app development and make the most out of your investment.
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