How Mobile Apps Are Powering Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Digitization is entrenching every area of our lives. Whether it’s banking, travel, food delivery, shopping or watching movies, digital transformation has been paving the path for businesses. The healthcare sector is also not far behind in adopting digital technologies and transforming the way service is catered in the industry. 

Digital transformation is the bridge that helps cater timely healthcare services in the nick of time as in the healthcare industry time is of the utmost importance. Every healthcare service provider believes that every second saved is a life saved. 

Why is the digital transformation needed in healthcare?

Digital transformation in the healthcare sector improves the range of healthcare service providers. Through telemedicine, the healthcare enterprises can easily deliver timely services to patients living in far away areas. Digital transformation in healthcare helps the healthcare enterprises streamline their operations and build trust with the patients by providing healthcare services at a faster rate. 

Digital transformation in healthcare also helps to reduce the costs associated with healthcare. Through digital transformation, the healthcare enterprises can collect patient’s data that enables them to provide quality healthcare services to their patients. 
Mobile apps are revolutionizing the healthcare space. Right from telemedicine to doctor appointment booking apps, the healthcare space is flooded with mobile applications that are making a difference in the lives of patients as well as medical professionals. There are many expert mobile app developers in the market today that can help you to build the best apps and transform your healthcare business. The global mobile app market for healthcare apps is expected to cross $200 billion by 2025.

In this blog, we shall explore the role of mobile apps in the healthcare sector.

How are mobile apps changing the healthcare space?

Although there are wide-ranging benefits of having a mobile app for your healthcare business, there are a few standout ways in which mobile apps impact healthcare. Let’s have a look at the most prominent ways in which mobile apps are changing the healthcare space. 

Monitoring a patient’s health from a distance

There are fitness bands and other wearable technologies that allow medical practitioners to keep track of the patient’s activities from a distance. Using a mobile app, the users can keep track of their activities like the number of steps they take in a day, the number of kilometers covered in cycling and the number of laps they finish swimming. These are just a few of the activities that fitness trackers track. The mobile app connected with these devices shows the total number of calories burnt by the users and helps them achieve their fitness goals.

IoT devices like ingestible sensors provide the doctors with another way to monitor the patient’s health from a distance. The ingestible sensors are pill sized sensors that are to be ingested by the patient just like they swallow their medicines. The ingestible sensors can monitor various parameters like blood glucose level, heart rate and blood pressure level. The ingestible sensors serve as an early warning system that can possibly prevent catastrophes like stroke. 

The data collected from the IoT devices can be accessed through a mobile app, allowing the doctors and nurses to take precautionary and corrective measures if they feel the need. You can hire healthcare app developers to build a customized app that can monitor patient health from the data feed received from wearable devices.  

Online appointment booking

A mobile app allows healthcare service providers to provide an online appointment booking feature to their users. Online booking is one of the major reasons why healthcare service providers go for digital transformation in healthcare. The online appointment feature is a very attractive feature because of the fact that it allows the patients to book appointments without leaving their homes.     

All the users have to do is download the app and book the appointment. Apart from online appointment booking, a mobile app also helps in acquiring data. As a mobile app helps you gather data regarding your customers, the app allows you to personalize your offers according to the preferences of your users. Personalization is a proven method to drive conversions, and gathering relevant patient data is one of the primary reasons why businesses go for healthcare app development.

Efficiently handle emergency cases

Many times in emergency cases, the lack of available data proves to be a hindrance for doctors. Mobile apps help healthcare service providers handle emergency cases efficiently. Once an emergency case comes up, the app will relay all the necessary information about the emergency case to the doctor. A mobile app can save crucial time that is otherwise spent on understanding the emergency and help save more lives. Using the app, the medical team can prepare in advance regarding an emergency. A mobile app can also aid the medical team speed up the documentation procedure during an emergency. 

Digital medical consultation

Many times it is not possible for patients living in remote areas to gain access to quality medical care. Digitization has removed such barriers. There are many interactive digital healthcare apps that allow patients to have an online medical consultation. The major benefit of such apps is that using the app, patients can ask general health questions and take medical consultations without requiring to go to the doctor. Such a health app can prove to be a boon for people with disabilities, people who live in remote areas or people who are too old to go to the doctor.

Better access to health data

A health app can access data from the EHR(electronic health records) of the patient and provide the necessary information to the medical practitioners. The doctors can have access to medical reports at any time using a mobile app. There are situations where a patient has multiple medical complications. The doctor can assess the reports of the patient and prescribe medicines accordingly. Health data also proves to be a boon in cases wherein the patient hops from one doctor to the other. Better access to health data allows the doctors to treat the patient effectively as they can prescribe new medications according to the current medical condition of the patient. 

Choose your doctor

As the range of medical services grows, it sometimes becomes difficult to choose the best doctor. Using mobile apps like Practo, patients can choose their doctor from a wide range of options available. A mobile app provides all the necessary information to the patients like the ratings and experience of the doctor, the reviews left by the other patients regarding the doctor, the price charged by the doctor and the distance of the doctor’s clinic from the patient’s location. A mobile app allows the patients to take an informed decision regarding the medical service they avail. 

Trends in the healthcare sector

Like every industry, the healthcare sector is also going through a disruptive phase in its history due to the digitization revolution. The following are the major trends that will shape the future of the healthcare industry and usher in a new era of digital transformation in the healthcare industry.

Blockchain in healthcare

Blockchain is a technology that came into the limelight due to the cryptocurrency revolution. While everybody is excited about bitcoins and other crypto coins, the healthcare industry is excited about the potential of the technology behind the cryptocurrency. A recent report states that blockchain investments in the healthcare market are expected to exceed $900 million by the end of 2023. 

Blockchain is a technology that allows the participants to create virtually untamperable records. The ability of blockchain to provide untamperable records to the participants is the single most important feature of blockchain that has piqued the interest of the healthcare industry veterans. Healthcare is an industry that is subjected to extra-tough scrutiny because of the sensitive nature of data that the industry deals with. Many countries like the U.S. have introduced strict laws like HIPAA that make it mandatory for all enterprises dealing with healthcare data to uphold strict data protection standards. 

Blockchain promises to usher a new era of digital transformation in the healthcare sector. Blockchain is a technology that can aid the companies dealing with healthcare data to safely exchange data with other concerned parties. Many countries like Australia have already started experimenting with blockchain technology to update their EHRs(electronic health records). There are many professional blockchain app developers who can efficiently build a blockchain-based health app. 

The growth of wearable medical devices

In the age of preventive medicine, doctors and patients are more aware now as they understand the importance of measuring critical health parameters like blood pressure, glucose levels and heart rate to identify any anomaly. 

Research suggests that the wearable medical device market will reach $27 million by the end of 2023. Here are some of the most common wearable devices available in the market. 

• Oximeters
• Heart rate sensors
• Smartwatches with steps and heart rate counts
• Sweat meters

Wearable devices not only personalize the healthcare experience but they also make the patient a participant in the process. This way, wearable devices help doctors ensure that the patient gets involved in the process. The data obtained from the wearable devices can also help the insurers accurately assess the risk profile of a patient and hand out policies accordingly. Many insurance companies give attractive offers to those patients who take care of their health. 

Virtual reality

The healthcare sector is exploring new ways to use virtual reality for the benefit of its users. According to research, the virtual reality market in healthcare is expected to reach $7 billion by the end of 2026. Healthcare enterprises are already exploring innovative applications of virtual reality. 

One of the patients in a hospital was undergoing chemotherapy. During her treatment, she expressed a desire to go to the beach. It was not possible for her to go to the beach as, due to chemotherapy sessions, her skin had become ultra-sensitive to sunlight now.

Using virtual reality, the healthcare provider simulated a beach-like environment right in her room so that she could feel like having a sunbath on the beach while she took chemotherapy sessions. 

In 2019, a hospital in the United States tried VR technology to reduce the pain of children who needed to undergo procedures like removing stitches and other foreign bodies in emergency rooms. Under the program, every child was provided with a VR headset that was connected to screens kept outside the operating room so that the parents could watch what their child was viewing. The children could walk through a jungle, take a roller coaster ride or talk with an animated snake in the VR headset, taking their minds off the operating procedure. 

Mobile apps are healthy for healthcare

Like every other field, mobile apps are becoming a necessity in the healthcare sector also. We have seen the ways in which a mobile app can help provide a better service to your users. With innovative technologies like blockchain and VR, mobile apps are truly ushering in a new era of digital transformation in the healthcare sector. Our healthcare app development guide can help you in your healthcare app development journey.