Healthcare Mobile App Development Best Practices

Keeping patients informed and up-to-date with the latest news in their care can be crucial to effective healthcare management, whether it’s a new treatment or study being tested or simply information about aftercare and follow-up appointments.

Health apps are a great way to provide this information, and they’re particularly useful in reaching patients who may not have internet access at home, allowing them to get their health information right on their phones. Application development companies can work with healthcare providers to create custom apps that will help keep their patients healthy and happy.

Is Healthcare Ready?

Is healthcare ready for mobile app development? The answer depends on what you mean by ready. After all, healthcare is complicated, and it’s not like technology just magically appeared in doctors’ offices out of nowhere. We have decades of history when it comes to health IT, which means that if you think about how far we have come in terms of technology in healthcare, you also need to consider how far we still have to go.

Mobile health continues to grow year after year and is predicted to exceed 300 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. Mobile health products are expected to evolve as our needs shift in accordance with trends, data, and epidemics here in the United States and abroad.

Yet another instance where mobile technology can make an impact would be during times of crisis, such as when we were faced with a global epidemic last fall, where we saw unprecedented growth in medical app downloads from individuals looking for an additional resource or support system during these trying times.

After all, some things might be better now than they were 20 years ago—like precision medicine or new techniques for treating diseases—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges ahead.

Health apps are a great way to provide this information, and they’re particularly useful in reaching patients who may not have internet access at home, allowing them to get their health information right on their phones. Application development companies can work with healthcare providers to create custom apps that will help keep their patients healthy and happy.

Why Healthcare Mobile App Development Will Skyrocket

Healthcare and mobile are two industries that are rapidly growing. As medical research progresses, diseases like cancer will become more treatable and technology will become cheaper, so people all over the world can afford treatment.

The demand for high-quality healthcare will only continue to grow as well; in order to meet future needs, our ability to provide it from home or on-the-go is essential. The future of healthcare mobile app development lies in making health care accessible for everyone, no matter where they are.

Advantages of Healthcare Mobile App Development

Healthcare app development isn’t some new and faddish idea. In fact, it’s been around for almost a decade now; in that time, we’ve seen a number of different approaches to healthcare mobile apps: Some have been focused on primary care, with patient health records being transmitted via medical apps or other forms of telemedicine. Others have zeroed in on specialized treatments (like brain cancer treatment apps) or specific groups (like breast cancer survivor apps). No matter what your interests are, you can find an app for that.

Top 5 advantages of healthcare app development:

• Better patient engagement
• Improving doctor-patient communication
• Enhancing clinical research
• Increasing accessibility
• Boosting staff efficiency

If you want to create your own smartphone application, there are a few questions you should ask yourself first:

• What will my app do?
• Who will use my app?
• What platforms do I want to support?
• How much time and money do I have available?

Healthcare Mobile App Development Industry Best Processes

When you’re on your phone and you need to check a health-related fact, what do you do? You probably looked it up on Google, right? But if you have a condition that requires consistent monitoring or medication management, there are plenty of other options out there that can help manage weight loss goals and remind you of medications. Also, apps can give you an accurate picture of your health (or lack thereof) by tracking both distances traveled and calories burned.

These are just two examples; healthcare mobile app development is still relatively new—but it’s quickly becoming an important part of our daily lives!

So why not learn how to best develop them? And who better to teach us than industry experts? Take a look at some of these tips for more information about creating healthcare mobile apps.

Here Are The Things That You Should Keep During Healthcare Mobile App Development

A mobile application development company that wants to provide the best possible product for their clients needs to learn about the latest trends in the industry. While there are plenty of resources available to help guide them, it’s also important to see what others are doing right or wrong in order to adjust their strategy accordingly. Here are seven tips that any healthcare mobile application development company should follow in order to provide the best products possible.

1) Establish an Innovative Model

Healthcare is a unique industry, with different challenges and opportunities than many others. By using a telemedicine app as a model, your healthcare app development process can be streamlined. For example, it’s possible to work with patients remotely while they’re out in the field—wherever they may be—rather than having them come into a medical facility.

So if you’re starting up in healthcare or looking to revamp your existing app, take inspiration from what works well in telemedicine and apply it to other healthcare products and services.

You could also look at innovative practices outside of healthcare that might be worth incorporating. For instance, mobile technology has made it easier for consumers to engage directly with brands and make purchases on their own terms; by adopting similar practices within healthcare, companies could help empower their users.

To learn more about how innovative approaches like these could affect your company’s strategy moving forward, reach out to a developer today!

Innovation isn’t just about creating new solutions; sometimes it’s about finding ways to make old ones better. If you’re looking for help making yours even better through innovative solutions such as telemedicine apps, reach out today!

2) Build with Simplicity in Mind

When creating your healthcare mobile app, it’s easy to get bogged down with bells and whistles — features and functions that sound appealing in theory but aren’t really needed by users. Even worse, all of those extra bells and whistles can cause confusion on a platform that is supposed to be simple and clear.

As you build your app, always keep in mind that simplicity is key. When you’re ready to start development, work with a team of expert healthcare mobile app developers to make sure your design isn’t over-stuffed or redundant.

3) Look For New Ways to Integrate Data

Business intelligence, whether it comes from a software application or an internal team, should be included in your plan to continuously improve healthcare mobile app development best practices. It’s time to start thinking about ways to take advantage of data that you might not have considered before.

How can you compare patient health with customer behavior?
What other metrics could benefit from an additional layer of information?

Once you’ve answered these questions, start looking for opportunities to incorporate those metrics into your current strategy. That will help ensure that all of your business decisions are made with detailed information at hand.

4) Prioritize Security and Data Protection

As with any other type of software development, security is paramount. If you’re building a healthcare app, it must be designed to protect data and maintain compliance with industry regulations.

While many developers are familiar with HIPAA, that’s only one set of standards to consider when developing a healthcare mobile app; your app must also meet FDA requirements as well as those imposed by state or local agencies, such as regulations governing prescription medications.

This means you have to do some homework and hire mobile app developers who know healthcare-related requirements and regulations inside and out.

To develop a secure application that doesn’t run afoul of regulatory bodies and keeps patient information protected at all times. Although there’s no hard-and-fast rule about how long it takes to develop a mobile app, if you want yours in use quickly—say, before an upcoming trade show—start planning early. First off, decide on which platform(s) you want to support: iOS? Android? Both?

Depending on what platforms and features your product will include, budgeting two months or more may be necessary just for coding alone. Once coding begins (or even before), get started on creating detailed wireframes and mockups of your user interface (UI). Designers will then translate those into actual screen designs. At that point, begin testing your UI with potential users and refine it accordingly based on their feedback.

5) Tracking All Devices, Processes, and App

It’s vital to track all of your devices, processes, and apps, to make sure that you are able to see where your company is losing or gaining time. The easiest way to do that is by installing a time-tracking application on each of your employees’ computers. This will allow you to easily track every aspect of their daily work habits in one place.

These applications can also help improve efficiency through reminders and notifications, as well as provide analytics tools so you can assess where you may be behind on projects or what needs to be improved upon.

6) Collaborate With Partners

Working with remote developers or an offshore application development company can increase your ability to innovate and provide better service by filling skill gaps within your organization. In addition, if you don’t have a development team on staff, you can save money by contracting out some of the work to outside agencies. But be careful! The road to success is rarely straightforward or easy; working with an external agency is no exception.

Find someone who understands your industry: The easiest way to ensure that a mobile application development partner knows what they’re doing is to find one that has already done it before. If you’re in healthcare, look for someone who has developed apps for other healthcare organizations. If you’re developing an application for public safety personnel, find someone who has worked with similar groups in other municipalities or states.

Look at their portfolio—if it’s empty, move on. And make sure they’ve actually worked with people like you—or even people in related industries—before; consulting experience might help them understand how to build solutions that meet industry-specific needs but doesn’t qualify as real-world experience building similar solutions specifically tailored to your needs and environment.

7) Make Use of Cutting-Edge Technology Platforms

Selecting a mobile platform that’s based on open-source technology gives you access to third-party developers and allows you to find other apps that will help your patients. While there are different smartphone platforms in existence, most healthcare apps run on either iOS or Android. To leverage leading technology platforms, consider which devices your target audience owns and has access to.

Challenges In Healthcare Mobile App Development

The field of healthcare has a number of challenges that make mobile app development more difficult. For example, privacy and HIPAA laws place stricter regulations on how patient information can be handled by a company.

Many apps also require special clearance to access medical data and go through intensive review processes before they are allowed to reach patients in hospitals or doctor’s offices. And while most modern smartphones are equipped with Bluetooth-capable scanning tools, such as near-field communication (NFC) and radio frequency identification (RFID), there are still security issues with mobile payments in healthcare.

In short, it takes more than a few clicks to create a healthcare mobile app that makes life easier for doctors and nurses—so you’ll need an experienced team at your side from start to finish. When you’re building a healthcare mobile app, don’t cut corners. Don’t waste time and money using offshore resources with little experience in developing reliable healthcare apps. A lack of experience often results in buggy code that doesn’t meet compliance standards, which can lead to expensive rewrites down the road.

Future Of Healthcare Mobile App Development

What about apps for healthcare? In a number of cases, mobile technology can help patients keep track of their health and fitness. The major health insurance providers have all released apps that let you do things like book an appointment with your physician or get reminders when it’s time to refill a prescription. And as long as our devices remain in contact with us at all times, they’ll be able to deliver relevant, timely health data at exactly the right moment.