The moment a new technology takes over the preferences of people, it is bound to create an impact in every industry of which those segments of people are related to.
Smartphones, mobile apps, and healthcare services are no exceptions in this context.
In line, it is not uncommon for modern businesses to discuss people, health, and mobile apps in one breath. These three things are so interrelated that if businesses do not collaborate and step up their efforts to provide better solutions to the customers, then they must be ready to get left behind.
A lot of companies have already ventured into this lucrative and purposeful segment by creating a platform through mobile apps.
Since the benefit is for both healthcare providers and people, such as better information access, quick visibility into the system, and prompt communication, the market is quickly becoming irresistible.
mHealth Market Facts & Figures
According to a report by IQVIA, there are approximately 318,000 health apps available in the app stores worldwide, with more than 200 apps being added each day.
Technology advancement in mobile and healthcare segment is one of the key reasons for the growing number of health apps.
A new report by Grand View Research reveals that mHealth market size is expected to reach USD 151.57 billion by 2025. Means the market will be progressing at a CAGR 25.7% during the forecasted period.
This growth reveals a relation between widespread mobile phone and app market, user-preferences, and growing health awareness among people. The number of young adults adopting Smartphones with subscription to mHealth apps in U.S. is on the rise.
For instance, a paper published in NCBI in February 2016 unveils that around 91.0% of adult population in the U.S. own a mobile phone, with 61.0% of them possessing smartphones.
Also, the healthcare system strengthening services segment is likely to register the highest CAGR of 27.7% over the forecast period.
Why Healthcare Service Providers Need to Shift their Focus on Mobile Apps
There are two key reasons for mobile apps to improve growth opportunities for healthcare industry.
1. Widespread Adoption of Digital Technology
In the modern epoch, there is no business that is untouched by digital technology. People from every domain of life are relying on some kind of digital technology to perform their daily activities, such as payment of bills, checking news, mailing details, and social media for communication.
Companies are also exhibiting similar behavior. They are now well-connected with their employees through digital technology and providing similar solutions to their customers.
Healthcare service providers have this opportunity to realize the maximum value from the widespread adoption of technology among people and the enterprises.
Technology used by Healthcare Consumers to Manage Their Health
Source: Accenture
They can now connect with patients and their staff to improve communication and optimize care management process in order to generate better outcomes for patients.
2. Rising Health Awareness Amongst Population
Increase of health awareness among consumers opens up doors for the new markets. This brings a lot of allied healthcare solution providers under the umbrella of healthcare industry.
Now that people are aware, they are demanding more and more information related to health problems, which they earlier used to ignore. This behavior brings them to hospitals quite early, thereby giving better opportunity to doctors to diagnose the diseases and enhance patient satisfaction.
The existing mHealth market has many app publishers yet it has space for new entrants.
Source: Research2Guidance
At this point of time, healthcare service provider must revisit their strategies to connect with their staff and patients and make the best of use of mobile apps to realize their objectives in these areas.
The Benefits of Healthcare and Medical Applications
Below are some key benefits of healthcare and medical applications, which are beneficial for patients, doctors, and hospitals.
1. Manage useful data efficiently
2. Maintaining health records of patients
3. Ability to access the health record sheet to check the patient's condition.
4. Patient care tools to improve quality of treatment and streamline workloads
5. Collecting useful information on healthcare industry, healthcare trends, and healthcare practices
6. Scheduling appointments, plan availability time better, send notification to patients about booking and cancellations of appointments
7. Getting quick consultancy from doctors
8. Monitoring patients from apps
9. Increase branding by approaching to a large customer base instantly
These benefits make mHealth irresistible for both patients and doctors. Besides, the emerging technologies in mHealth sector add to the benefits. It is essential that they work with their mobile app development company in collaboration to develop the mobile app.
Let’s take a look.
Emerging Mobile App Technologies in Healthcare
Healthcare modernization is being driven by emerging technologies in mobile app industry. Rising healthcare costs, growing incidence of chronic diseases, and an ageing population are the biggest challenges throttling the industry, which modern technology could provide a solution for.
Healthcare modernization largely depends on two pillars: Patient-centric culture and data intelligence.
Emerging mobile app technologies can help healthcare solution providers create a patient centric culture and provide data intelligence to strengthen decision-making.
Below are two key technologies that could help Healthcare Providers Combat Market Challenges
AI in Medical Apps
Since compiling and analyzing information is crucial in medical apps, Artificial Intelligence based applications are the best choice for healthcare solution providers. AI can help collect, store, re-format data accurately and efficiently.
Besides, it can perform repetitive jobs faster. For example, in Cardiology and Radiology disciples, a large volume data is generated, analyzing which is a time-consuming task. A robot can perform these activities without requiring much human supervision.
Artificial Intelligence can also help in providing medical consultation based on personal history of patients and general knowledge. It also supports drug creation and provide precision medicine.
IoT in Healthcare
IoT has extensive applicability in healthcare. Using IoT based medical application; healthcare providers can perform real-time monitoring and can collect medical and other critical data. They can further transfer the information through Smartphone to the physicians and patients.
A study conducted by the Center for Connected Health Policy reveals that remote patient monitoring has resulted in 50% reduction in 30 day readmission rate on heart failure patients.
IoT can help with healthcare mobility solution to enable interoperability, information exchange, and data movement for effective health service delivery.
From data assortment to analysis and on-time alert in the event of life-threatening circumstances, IoT has multiple applications and benefits that can be used by the healthcare industry to deliver better services and achieve expected patient outcome.
