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Part 2: The Essential Healthcare Mobile App Features You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Synchronizing Medical Devices

The 12 Innovative Features that Modernize Your Healthcare Mobile App Experience (Continued)

In part one of this blog series, we discussed the value of building a modern healthcare mobile app that empowers users to play a more active role in managing their health. We examined the first six essential features your app must incorporate to meet healthcare consumer demands (telehealth, provider search, EMR integration, biometric login, facility locator, and turnkey network connectivity). In this blog, we will continue our exploration into the essential app features that every healthcare organization needs to incorporate to deliver the optimal frictionless experience for their customers.

Lab Results

Timely access to outcomes from laboratory tests is a critical feature that supports an app’s remote and telehealth capabilities. By incorporating lab results into your app, you can eliminate the need for additional visits or phone calls and enable prompt awareness for test outcomes which may expedite decision-making regarding follow-up actions or treatment. Different members of the care team can review and interpret information in a centralized platform, reducing errors and miscommunication. Lab results also contribute to comprehensive patient records within your EMR system and healthcare app to give a more holistic view of the patient’s health with long-term monitoring and trend-analysis. This provides opportunities for patient education and active management of their health journey.

User Experience & Performance Analytics

User experience and performance analytics provide valuable quantitative and qualitative data that can inform product roadmaps and decision-making. Performance analytics play a critical role in quickly identifying and fixing bugs and technical issues that frustrate your users and ultimately lead them to uninstall your app or leave negative reviews that actively work against your brand management strategy. Analyzing user behavior, preferences, and patterns, helps developers and stakeholders make data-driven decisions regarding feature enhancements, prioritizing updates, and allocating resources effectively. This ensures your app development efforts are in alignments with user needs and expectations. Fostering a culture of continuous improvement ensures that your healthcare app remains relevant to your users and competitive within the marketplace.

Apple & Google Health Integrations

Apple and Google Health are part of a broader mHealth ecosystem that benefits from cross-platform functionality and integration with a larger collection of health-focused apps. Integrating your app with Apple and Google’s respective digital health platforms promotes data interoperability to deliver a more connected and data-driven experience for your patients. Wearable devices effortlessly collect and sync valuable health data, including vital signs, activity, sleep patterns, and more, to the Apple and Google Health platforms, virtually eliminating the need for manual data entry. This expands your reach by equipping your app with a broader set of health data that can be leveraged to provide personalized insights and recommendations. Users can securely share their aggregated health data with providers to generate a more accurate and holistic view of their personal health.

Camera-Enabled Document Upload

Integrating a mobile device’s camera functionality to your healthcare app helps to scan and upload relevant documents, like insurance cards. This helps to simplify patient registration by eliminating the need for manual data entry or presenting physical documents while registering in-person. Eliminating manual data entry also increases data integrity by minimizing the risk of human error. Storing insurance information in your app empowers seamless integration with billing and claims processes, accelerated processing times, and enhanced accuracy of insurance-related transactions. This aligns with the broader healthcare trend of digitization as the industry moves toward a paperless future state to keep pace with consumer expectations.

Chat Experience

AI-powered chatbots are designed to simulate human-like conversations with users through text or voice-based interactions. A chatbot can act as a virtual 24/7 customer service representative to provide information, answer questions, and offer support to your app users. Incorporating a chatbot into your healthcare app can help your organization accommodate larger volumes of user inquiries and support requests while reducing call volume to facilities and call centers. They can be programmed to provide personalized experiences based on user preferences and historical data and to continuously improve and refine conversational capabilities. Chatbots play a critical role in triaging user inquiries and directing them to the appropriate resources, which streamlines the user journey and optimizes the use of human support resources to minimize burnout.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are short messages or alerts sent to a user’s mobile device from an app. They appear as notifications on the device’s lock screen, home screen, or notification center and can help to deliver personalized, time-sensitive information to your users. Modern healthcare apps should incorporate push notifications for important health reminders, emergency notifications, appointment and scheduling management, and patient engagement. It is important to note that while push notifications are valuable, their frequency and content should be carefully managed to avoid overwhelming or annoying your users. Striking the right balance ensures that your app remains a useful tool for direct communication and engagement with your patients.

It’s Time to Modernize

Modernizing your healthcare mobile app is a necessity in today’s competitive digital landscape. Meeting the evolving user expectations and advancing the quality and delivery of healthcare services remain top of mind among industry leaders. Modern app features can help you achieve this by enabling convenient access to care, enhancing operational efficiency, improving patient outcomes, and significantly reducing costs enterprise-wide. Embracing the power of technology and continuously evolving your healthcare app ensures that is stays at the forefront of healthcare innovation.

Let’s Build a Better Healthcare App Together

Are you ready to build a better healthcare app? For more information on Perficient’s healthcare mobile application expertise, subscribe to our blog or contact us today.

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Jeff Small, Director, Mobile Solutions

Jeff Small is a Certified Product Manager & Product Leader, and an experienced mobile solutions leader that understands the connection between experience and product success. He is a Director in the Product Development Solutions group for Perficient.

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