In modern world, along with personal lives, every professional field is getting highly influenced by technology. Among these professional fields, a great revolution has been brought by technology in the healthcare industry. With respect to Canada, this merging of technology and healthcare industry has done wonders in the healthcare app development, by improving as well as raising the health condition of people.
The AI technology merged with medical science has paved ways for innovation in healthcare industry. Various medical science areas like pharmacy, biotechnology, information technology, and development of medical devices and equipment have seen a rise just because of the advancement in AI. From relatively small innovations like adhesive bandages, ankle braces, to relatively large as well as complex technology like MRI machines, artificial organs, robotic prosthetic limbs, AI has put a significant impact on the medical as well as health care industry.
In medical as well as healthcare industry, the dependency on technology is greatly increasing because of which there has been a hike in healthcare app development. The health apps are useful in diagnosis of the patient, performing surgical procedures efficiently, and providing overall improved healthcare.
The information technology has also made a great contribution in the field of healthcare industry. Lately, there has been an increase in the usage of electronic medical records (EMR), along with smartphones and tablets. This is benefitting both the doctors and the patients as well.
The technology in healthcare industry evolved from making new equipment familiar to the doctors so that they can use the equipment for private practices and even in hospitals for enhancing the connectivity between patients and doctors. It is becoming common today for the patients to communicate with the physician via video conferencing so as to save money as well as time, that is spent usually on traveling or sending health information instantly.
With the construction of more hospitals as well as evolution of modern practices via technology like the mobile devices, the doctors can now access all the useful information, right from information about drugs, various new research studies, to the patient history, within a fraction of seconds. Also, due to their effective portability, the physicians can never be disconnected with any sort of information. There are different apps which can help in finding any potential health threat and examine the information digitally with the technology such as X-rays as well as CT scans. Thus, technology has been beneficial to the healthcare industry in many ways.
Because of various websites as well as mobile apps, the healthcare industry has converted into an online platform. Because of Internet, the technology has been able to show its importance in the healthcare, medical, and lifestyle domains. Today, there are many apps which focus mainly on the mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. This has able to build a strong base for healthcare app development. These healthcare apps can be used as a medical reference database, clinical checkup tool, and medical calculator.
There are various health as well as fitness apps, which helps the users to track the health by users and provide them with information about the fitness level. So, now some facts which are necessary to develop health apps are discussed below:
- Target hardware
A developer who is working on healthcare app development would aim to target more than a single platform. These platforms may include desktop as well as mobile gadgets like smartphones and tablets. Each smartphone user operates the same app in a different way depending upon the information speed or information length. A healthcare app should be optimized to work on different platforms including smartphones as well as tablets. Though there are various healthcare apps which are developed to run on smartphone, only few of them are compatible with tablets.
- API components
Application Programming Interface (API) is a process, tool, or routine that executes some specific task or interacts with some part or the whole software. There are various social networking apps and advertisers which use APIs to communicate any information. Whenever a user login into the app, it is the API that supports the whole authentication process by connecting the device of the user to the remote server.
The healthcare app development operators add various API components which can help to authenticate the device of the user to access the information of the patient, in some case of patient engagement solution. Also, the developer should add other APIs coming from suppliers and vendors.
- Data security
The mobile app developers usually avoid to store the data of the app in the device for some security reasons. If the app runs on traditional clinical management system, the developer can easily store the data of the app to the server by limiting the number of API requests. So, if the security is given priority as in the case of healthcare apps, the developers are recommended to work on end-to-end encryption.
- Device security
There are various data security companies such as Arxan which suggest that in comparison with iOS apps, Android apps are less secure. In fact, there are various cybersecurity advocates which prefer iOS platform over Android for developing apps which need more security features.
Though Android, today, covers more than 80% of the smartphone market, the smartphone manufacturers are trying their best to fill in the security gap which pulls Android operating system back. These manufacturers are coming up with great solutions but still the path seems long.
Samsung Knox is a good example to prove that Android operating system seems less secure, but manufacturers are trying their level best. It is user-friendly and the user can do variety of activities ranging from work to personal activities. This is emerging as a good step from the manufacturers because today most organizations are working on “bring your own device” (BYOD) policy.
Second best example can be that of Blackberry. It is trying to develop smartphones with high security features so that it can rule the market again. Moreover, their developers have suggested some code of conduct which can be added to make the mobile app much safer.
Every daily-life app needs to possess some essential features which can indulge the user in it. These features are listed in an explained way below:
- Step/Sleep/Run tracker
This tracker should work in collaboration with the details that the user provides. Like if a user wants to take 8 hours sleep and if this time limit exceeds, then it should signal the user. Some other features which can be associated with this tracker include blood pressure, heart rate, water intake and incline swings. For those users who really want to dig deep, some complex features may be included like calorie counter.
- Analytics.
Here analytics refer to the measuring of metrics on the collected data of the activities of the user. This can further lead to make certain conclusions.
- Push notifications
Push notifications in an app are very essential. These notifications act as a signal for any sort of reminder or update. In healthcare apps, these notifications can be used to encourage users to take care of their health.
Some healthcare mobile apps usually are monetized and come with some prepaid subscription for providing the services. Like, Headspace app offers a monthly as well as a yearly subscription, whichever is preferable to the user. Thus, a healthcare app developer can monetize the app by putting any advertisement but it should not degrade the quality of the user experience of the app.
Reasons why mobile apps fail
There are various reasons by which mobile apps are not able to work properly or altogether fail. Some of the reasons are listed below.
- Poor User Experience
Though there may be many reasons behind the failure of a mobile app, the foremost is the poor user experience. It is essential to realize that the mobile app market is full of loaded stuff, many of them are not used by anyone, so there they reach in the category of “ghost house apps”. Thus, the developer should understand and avoid adding the irrelevant stuff to the app such as inappropriate content, or complex user flow because this can leave a negative impression on the customer about the app.
- Poor Expertise and Less Industry Knowledge.
While developing a healthcare app, it is necessary that the developer should have excellent expertise to develop the app which can cater to the needs of the customer. Like, in case of a healthcare app, if the developer is not leaving any section by which the patient can communicate to the doctor, the user will part away from that app.
- Not solving the Particular Problem
One of the major issues that the healthcare apps fail is that these apps do not solve a specific problem, instead they try to solve all the problems, resulting in none being solved.
- Failure to Meet the Privacy Guidelines.
All the medical or health related mobile apps need to follow the rules laid by HIPPA. This is one of the major factors where many healthcare app development companies lack behind.
