Mobile apps have penetrated almost every vertical of the industry, including Healthcare. Healthcare apps are a boon for both medical/healthcare professionals and the general public. These apps go a long way in making various facets of medical workflow more efficient. This is the reason why there is an ever-increasing demand for mobile apps in the healthcare sector.

Let us take a look at the pointers below to see how healthcare apps are in the best interest of patients and healthcare providers in more ways than one.

Benefits of Healthcare Apps:

1. Improves Workflow Efficiency – There is no doubt that these apps help improve the workflow efficiency. For e.g. The patients need not come all the way to the hospitals, clinics or labs to collect their reports. They can access all their reports on their mobile devices.

2. Saves Valuable Time – Healthcare apps can work as powerful tools to access patient information. For example, physicians can easily access patient information wirelessly on their devices and advise them on their health issues in real-time using cloud based services.

3. Expertise At Fingertips – Patients can avail expertise of physicians’ right at their fingertips and that too round the clock. Their general queries can also be easily answered in real-time and they will not require a trip to the healthcare facilities.

4. Saves Expenses, Increases ROI – Healthcare apps help reduce a lot of expenses for the patients as they make things simpler by minimizing the gap between patients and medicos. The apps also reduce the burden of administrative work like record keeping and thus, the healthcare professionals can focus more on optimizing patient care and handle more number of patients. Thus, it also increases the ROI substantially for healthcare businesses.

5. Enhances Productivity – Various healthcare apps increase the efficiency of the healthcare professionals and providers, which in turn enhances the productivity in a huge way. For example, a group of medical professionals are on a field trip. They can use the apps to record/document the trip, make notes and take pictures or use them to quickly fill out various forms digitally.

6. Faster Decision Making – Think of a scenario where you want immediate help to alleviate the symptoms of a medical condition. In such cases, custom medical apps are a great help and are proving to be lifesavers; healthcare professionals can quickly advise the patients what steps to take, ensuring that the person is able to stop symptoms from going out of control, till professional help arrives.

7. Transcends Boundaries – Another area where healthcare apps are proving to be beneficial is in accessing the past medical records of patients. Consider a scenario where a patient is on vacation to a different city and needs immediate medical attention. In this case, his physician can transfer his medical files via cloud service to the place he is getting his treatment done.

8. Offers Multiple Functionalities – Patients can utilize the apps to obtain billing information, list of healthcare institutions, locate nearby drug stores, store their prescriptions and diagnosis reports etc. Also, certain apps can be used to remind them about the dose, timings, duration and medication name of their prescribed medicines.

All these are just some of the uses of mobile technology in healthcare. Although there are already many advanced healthcare apps present in the market, there is still a lot of scope for improvement. In order to accommodate the future requirements, there is a need to develop new and innovative mobile apps that are customized, keeping in mind the specific requirements of the health care professionals, patients or organizations.