Using mobile or smartphone devices in the healthcare establishments by the health care professionals (HCPs) and caregivers has almost become the standard part of the protocol of practices.
They are no longer viewed just as a useful personal tool that at times can be used for certain functions like browsing about a medicine. Many mobile app startups have emerged catering to this ever-growing healthcare app market. Today, smartphones are viewed as integral tools of healthcare settings around the globe.
“In a multitude of ways, smartphone apps are transforming the healthcare practices and quality of the services all over the globe.”
Here are some of the healthcare services impacted by mobile apps.
Data And Time Management
From taking quick notes to dictating prescriptions to taking and sharing images to collaborating on medical documents, we have mobile apps for literally every purpose.
While apps like Evernote and Dropbox have appeal across all industries, in the healthcare sector they play an impressive role in managing the medical data and facilitating collaboration among the professionals. The emergence of cloud-based document sharing apps and the real-time video chat apps further helped caregivers to manage data and time for optimum efficiency.
Easier Access To Electronic Health Record (EHR)
Earlier Electronic Medical Record or Electronic Health Record (EHR) was handled the standalone software solutions that could be accessed only through the hospital work stations and so the medical data could not be uploaded and accessed when they are needed for the patients.
This is where healthcare mobile apps have emerged to allow greater ease in allowing collaboration with medical data and patient information.
Medical Communication
Healthcare facilities often function in a tremendously dispersed manner across multiple facilities and locations. For a more performance-driven and efficient healthcare system, it is important for all these diverse facilities to communicate and collaborate and share vital information for faster decision making leading to better treatment and saving of lives.
Thanks to the mobile app ecosystem that offers all sorts of apps for sharing, collaborating, and communicating among the professionals, medical communication and collaboration have become easier than ever before.
Drug Databases And References
Medical professionals and doctors often access certain mobile apps providing extensive drug references and databases for practical needs while doing duty in clinics and hospitals. Already several popular drug databases and reference apps have become popular across all major mobile and online platforms including Epocrates, Skyscape Omnio, Micromedex, FDA Drugs, several others.
Accessing Latest Medical News
For the medical fraternity, it is extremely important to stay updated on the latest medical information and the research materials. There are several popular mobile apps and medical websites that continue to work as the ready reckoners for professionals when they need to access some information or just need to inquire about the latest research findings on that topic.
From MedAge to the WebMD to MayoClinic blogs, the internet and mobile space are full of important data repositories.
Faster And Accurate Decision Making
Healthcare mobile apps can quickly provide precise evidence-based information to professionals to ensure faster decision making in different clinical setups and treatment contexts.
These days, mobile apps allowing doctors to scan a document better on their handheld devices are actually making the treatment procedure faster and more well-timed.
Glucose Buddy
Healthcare diabetes tracking and a whole array of nutrition tracking apps are the latest resorts for digitally equipped diabetes patients around the world. But among all these apps Glucose Buddy made its own place as the next-door name for managing the entire care process for such patients.
“From allowing to track blood glucose levels to monitoring insulin levels to creating diet charts to scheduling medicines, in a multitude of ways this app makes the life of diabetes patients simple.”
Patient Monitoring
Patient monitoring is crucial for many life-threatening and chronic illnesses, especially for the aged population. Thanks to healthcare mobile apps now remote monitoring of patients has become easier than ever before. The emergence of mobile-connected smart wearables further helped to make progress in this regard.
Thanks to health and fitness bands and mobile apps for monitoring pulse rate, now taking care of patient conditions and risk factors has become easier than ever before.
Healthcare Training
Mobile devices and the ecosystem of healthcare apps are now facilitating easier education and training of medical professionals and caregivers.
From allowing the healthcare professionals to access medical databases and drug references to providing them hands-on analysis about patient conditions and the respective treatment, all can be done right on the handheld device screen.
Leading Healthcare App Examples
Finally, all our explanations will be less substantiated if we do not provide some great examples of hugely successful healthcare apps that became really common names in healthcare facilities and among the professionals. Here we have showcased four such apps that stand apart from the rest.
MyChartMobile
This app built by Epic Systems offers both service provider-specific and patient-specific features through one single app. This helps both strings and healthcare professionals to stay communicating more easily.
The app allows the patients to check their test results in real-time. Apart from this the patients and their family members can also manage the bills and share various critical information easily. If you are looking for fixing doctor appointments or for making schedules for medical tests, this app should come to mind first.
Nurx
It is still a taboo for many people to ask questions corresponding to their health and problems corresponding to pregnancy, infertility, etc. Patients with such queries often fail to make their questions adequately heard, let alone be heard. This is why we needed an app-based service that caters to this vacuum. Nurx has come as an app for such needs.
Nurx is the first of its kind app that helps users with all kinds of information and resources for birth control. The app is quite an innovative ways helps patients to keep their health sound and content. The best thing about the app is that after just downloading the app the patients can consult a specialist and can even get a prescription offering them the medicines for their problems.
AliveCor ECG Heart Monitor
The healthcare sector is flooded by connected medical gadgets of all sorts. From the connected ECG monitors that can be controlled through a mobile app to the connected fitness band that keeps tracking the pulse rate, there are plenty of gadgets and connected apps that make health monitoring easier in a never-before manner. But many such connected gadgets are not particularly medical grade in terms of results.
But AliveCor is different because it is a completely medical-grade ECG monitor for cardiac patients. Coming with a small but powerful sensor the device can send information about the heart condition directly to the mobile device of the user.
Conclusion
Mobile healthcare apps have already become an integrated part of the medical ecosystem. In the years to come, we can expect the vast majority of regular physician visits will turn to telemedicine apps. These apps are also likely to reduce the workload from hospitals and clinics.
— Olivia is the senior developer at CMARIX TechnoLabs Pvt. Ltd., a react native development company
