How are health apps helping people in this difficult time?

Many patients face obstacles that make it difficult for them to commit the necessary time and resources to visit their health care provider on a regular basis. Health apps reduce the burden on patients by eliminating time away from work, childcare concerns, and travel time and costs. It requires certain technologies to connect physician with patient via secure, high-resolution video for a remote visit, share medical images, send text messages or online chats in real-time, and submit prescriptions to the patient’s pharmacy. A typical health app business model will have the following features:

Real-time Video Conferencing: This allows physicians to connect with their patients or other providers through secure, 2-way video. Real-time video is the best substitute for an in-person visit, since it allows the provider and patient to interact face-to-face and provides more visual data than a consult over the phone.

Chat Function: A chat function is alternative medium of talk between patients and physicians in real-time.

ePrescribe: Healthcare providers will be enabled to submit prescriptions electronically to pharmacies. No need to clarify a script when the pharmacy can’t decipher a provider’s handwriting.

EMR Integration: Our platform will have direct integration with electronic medical record (EMR), so that patient histories are readily available, having records among both in-person, and a flawless remote visit.

Integrated Billing: Most health apps platforms have an integrated billing system. This will help physicians to charge and collect payment from patients for a remote visit and even file a claim.

Medical device integration: The solution can connect and communicate directly with mobile medical devices. This platform will track patient medical data and then share it with physician remotely.

Reporting and Analytics:  Presents report regarding how many remote visits a physician has done, how many different patients she or he has seen, the most common reason for the visit, how satisfied patients were with their visits, etc.

Mobile Medical Devices: Patient’s medical condition will be captured through medical devices and the data will be sent to medical professionals at another location through the platform. Platforms use sophisticated devices to make them easy to carry and easy to use. Some of devices are as follows:

Apart from the above clinical diagnoses, mental health apps have also made a big impact in the treatment of mental health issues. A mental health app business plan generally includes questions and psychometric analysis based upon which professionals decide on a course of action.
Some of the key benefits that healthcare apps have are listed below:

• Health apps are expected to reduce overall health costs for both patients and providers.
• Improved Efficiency and Speed of Healthcare Delivery
• Ease of Data Collection for Health Care Providers
• Increasing Convenience for Patients

They also help to monitor our health parameters (using IoT integrated devices) such as our nutrition levels, glucose levels, and a variety of other health conditions no matter where we are or what time of the day it is.  Overall, health apps encourage a healthy lifestyle and we expect they will continue to innovate on new ways that improve our lives for years to come.

Especially during the pandemic we have seen how beneficial health apps and telemedicine has proven. Doctors are able to check patient parameters online and suggest the best possible treatment. Patients who have mild symptoms can recover in home isolation.

This new reality helps doctors, pharmacists, nutritionists, psychologists, etc. improve their workflows to provide faster and better service. There have been instances of Government departments co-operating with health app providers to offer Covid vaccination appointments to citizens as we have seen in France.  Recent trends point to the fact that health apps are becoming mainstream in clinical diagnosis of patients especially in North America and Europe. In countries like India we have seen companies like Practo doing a very good job of providing such services.

Though health apps form a very minor percentage of clinical diagnosis even in advanced countries like US and the EU, it will not be long before such apps become more acceptable to patients and physicians alike. To make health apps more acceptable to society the key factors involved are greater digital penetration as that will help a bigger section of society to access those apps. Another factor that is holding back health apps is from the physicians end. Many medical practitioners are still showing resistance to change and the acceptance rate is slow as they are not fully convinced and familiar with the telemedicine applications. Once these factors are overcome health apps will see a greater penetration thereby reducing the pressure on physical clinics.

Developing health apps requires a detailed due diligence. If you are interested to launch a health app you can connect with us at info@intelligentq.co.in.