Top 9 Factors to Consider While Developing Healthcare Mobile Application

The World Health Organization states that, "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

That means when we talk about health, we talk about the overall wellbeing of an individual. And with the modern and digital world, apps can determine to remind you about your health. The popularity of healthcare mobile apps has been increasing, the latest statistics by GMC says that in past years only 30% of doctors were using mobile apps, but now over 80% of doctors have been using mobile apps.

With the advancement in technology, the demand for mHealth apps is going to increase in the coming years. App development enables the tracking of health parameters of users and provides users with interesting insight about their fitness level.

As a developer, you must establish flawless and unmistakable requirements early into the project, or even in stages subject to development practice. So basic healthcare mobile app development is the process in which mobile apps are developed intending to help users to manage their medical condition, insurance claim, hospital visits, and fitness goals effectively.

With the advancement of technology and recent attack of pandemic COVID-19, the demand for mHealth apps boosts like never before. In fact, it is estimated that by 2025, the mobile health market is predicted to reach beyond 300 billion U.S. dollars.

The mobile health market has the power to improve the overall healthcare system by improved quality of health services, reduced cost, efficiency, communication, and a lot more. With the increase in use of smartphones and internet consumptions, the mHealth market has grown simultaneously.

Before getting into the development of healthcare app, it is vital to note following shortcomings of healthcare apps that you can avoid for an unstoppable growth:

• Lack of clinical inputs
• Poor usability
• Unclear structure without addressing certain problems
• Failure to comply with rigorous privacy regulations and security practices.

Types of Healthcare Apps:

There are plenty numbers of healthcare mobile apps in the market, following are just few majors:

• Reminder Apps: Help patients manage their prescriptions and appointments.
• Remote Monitoring: Include life scans for patients with diabetes, ECG viewing, oxygen level remote checks, remote heart monitoring, and tele-health services.
• Clinical use and assistance in Diagnosis: These apps offer personal health record access including MRI, X-ray, reviewing electronic charts, and lab test results, possibility to check up on symptoms.
• Maintaining a Healthy lifestyle: These clients include diet and exercise monitoring, fitness tracking, pregnancy and baby development application.

Top Things You Must Consider While Developing A Healthcare Mobile App

1. Target Hardware

Hardware is the most important factor to consider, while planning to develop a health app as it is used by people in their tablets, smartphones, or desktops. The way smartphone’s users interact with applications differs from the way they interact on tablets as generally, smartphone users prefer the speed of information over the length.

2. API Components

Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of protocols to carry out interaction with the software module that you would design for a dedicated healthcare mobile app.

Many of you may have noticed that before consuming content on social networking apps you have to log in. But when you log in for the first time, you have been asked for your authentication to access several files from your device.

In the same way, the same module is required for a healthcare mobile app to connect your device with a remote server to access a central patient’s repository. Your API requirements entirely depend on the complexity of your mobile app design.

3. Minimum Viable Product

MVP is the minimum, or you can say basic features that a healthcare mobile app consists of. So while giving the MVP you must not pull all your capital in it as there is a long way to go as far as your mHealth is concerned. MVP helps you to get the feedback from your client and you come to know what exactly your client is looking for. Further, you should take MVP feedback more seriously to increase its chances of success.

4. UI/UX Considerations

UI/UX plays a major role in the success and failure of an app. Even if your app has all amazing features but it is difficult to use, then chances are there that most users won’t turn to it again. While developing the app, keep in mind that the app might be used by both patients and doctors frequently. The goal is to develop the app that is easy to use, as patients have to fill certain data on a regular interval. Likewise, doctors have to fill various records of multiple patients. Considering the impact of illness on patients’ minds, make sure to choose fonts, colors, texts to illustrate the positive picture.

5. Data Security

Due to security reasons, nowadays, app developers do not store data in the mobile phone instead stored in the app server. App servers are generally maintained by the system administrator and do not allow more APIs into applications.

This state leads to more chances to hack, which further results in data breach. Hence, while you code, make sure the entire data is encrypted. Developers must insist on using end-2-end encryption to defend the breach of users’ data and security.

6. Interoperability

Interoperability plays a vital role in the healthcare application, as the app should be able to resemble all features or activities that hospital is currently taking care of. Generally, hospitals prefer single software that transforms into mobile apps to avoid any deviations in features and activities.

It is important to take note that hospitals still prefer traditional over cloud hosting to evade the hefty cost of it. While developing an app, make sure to build an app that is compatible with the existing layer of setup.

7. Repetition Process Development

Your application must be able to carry out the iteration process effectively. Even the world’s popular apps and software have been developed using iteration. It is recommended to follow an agile program to deliver software code in the iterative manner. By iteration we meant to carry out the process or adding features one by one. An agile process is the key for developing heart winning art.

8. Device Security

If you go by statistics, the android users in 2020 were 84.8%, while iOS held 15.2% users. So now you know the large population uses Android, but do you know Android apps are less secure than iOS apps? In the digital world, security matters more than anything else as it carries out a lot of financial transactions, contains confidential documents, and a lot more.

To fill the security gap, many smartphone manufacturers are stepping in to fill the security holes left by Android. Samsung Knox allows users to keep their work activities solitude from personal activities. Even Blackberry is working hard to bounce back to device security once again.

9. Testing Healthcare Applications

Testing mobile app is irreplaceable to avoid fatal repercussions. But with healthcare apps, most often, it is released without proper testing of functionality. The chance of its failures gets high. Either you can use manual or automatic testing; it is important to test the healthcare apps in the following ways:

• To create the real-world scenario, ask your healthcare mobile app developer to test in the poor connectivity.
• Check authenticities and security by testing components like PHII, PII, and other factors.
• Check its compatibility with medical systems and medical devices.
• Test your app on different OS such as Android, Windows, iOS, and others.

In Conclusion

So, we have covered almost all important factors that you must consider before rolling your plan on the floor. User experience, data security, user needs, are some of the key highlighters of an application. If all the above given factors are kept in mind while developing a healthcare app, then we are sure success will be no longer a dream.

At Multipz Technology, we build great applications to transform people’s lives. Contact us today to turn your healthcare app idea into a successful application.