8 Must-Have Apps Every Hospital Needs

Key Takeaways

  • The fact that more healthcare companies are creating software (namely, IoMT solutions) to solve issues and enhance the quality of services is one-factor driving growth.
  • Digital health trends show that patients are using their smartphones more frequently than ever to track their overall health, get health advice, and have video calls with doctors for prescriptions. Patients love the undeniable ease that healthcare apps offer.

According to Accenture, 66% of the largest hospitals in the US have a mobile app available. Nearly 54% of patients said they wish to utilize healthcare applications as the use of smartphones and mobile devices increases. The issue is that only 2% of our patient demographics are using the hospital app for their preferred physician.

The IT startup scene is exploding with healthcare apps. Today, app stores provide more than 318,000 mobile health (mHealth) applications. The market for healthcare apps is being driven by rising smartphone usage, and investors are leveraging these trends by making significant investments in digital healthcare marketing.

Top Mobile Apps For Hospitals To Consider

The primary categories of software utilized by contemporary healthcare institutions are as follows.

1. Mobile Apps for General Hospital Management

Mobile applications can streamline and organise a wide range of administrative procedures in hospitals. These hospital administration apps are

  • Managed by hospital employees, including administrators, nurses, and doctors.
  • Linked to secure databases to exchange patient data and hospital records.
  • Used for medical staff management, hospital payroll administration, and more.
  • Secured from illegal access (biometric options, etc.)
  • Powerful tool for lowering healthcare expenditures
  • Used to expedite and streamline numerous administrative tasks in hospitals.

2. Medication management app

Medication management apps monitor and regulate medications and procedures (inpatient or outpatient, depending on the ailment).

As a result, you can develop hospital apps that

  • Assist in keeping track of and managing the hospital’s drug supply.
  • Allow nurses to record and monitor the medications they give to patients.
  • Enable doctors to monitor a patient’s medication regimen (drug titles, dosages, etc.)
  • Make it possible for people receiving care at home to record the medications they consume.
  • Compile medication statistics in relation to specific alterations in patient health so that customised medication plan revisions can be requested.
  •  reminders on when to take your medications and get your shots.

3. Smartphone apps for medical imaging

When it comes to accurate diagnosis and therapy, DICOM pictures are incredibly helpful. Hospital app developers may assist you in developing a software solution for medical imaging in the context of sharing, commenting, consulting, and more for visual representation of medical data.

For instance:

  • Hospital mobile apps for doctors to access, discuss, and comment on medical images.
  • AI-powered DICOM apps for automated medical image analysis.
  • Hospital mobile apps for patients to collect, review, and share DICOM images.

4. Cancer and outpatient care apps

Patients with severe but under control illnesses are among the patient types that need round-the-clock monitoring and consultation (for example, oncology patients being treated at home).

This kind of high-quality application consists of

  • IoT (IoMT) integrations for medical products that can be provided to patients for in-home care, such as sticky sensors, smart implants, injectable pumps, and other tools.
  • Medication dose calculators for nurses and self-care patients.
  • Telecommunication: video conferencing, secure chat, and other tools allowing care for common ailments that don’t require an in-person visit.

5. Apps for women’s health & pregnancy

For women and their families, becoming pregnant is a tremendously precious moment. With the use of hospital-backed programmes, expectant parents and fathers can effectively traverse this time by keeping track of their general health, pregnancy stage, and other crucial factors.

These features can be found in this kind of hospital app:

  • Ovulation and pregnancy calendars, diaries, and meal planning.
  • Caregiver online consultation for pregnant women.
  • Maternity care advice and useful content.

6. Hospital wayfinding and navigation apps

When patients are unable to make their way to and through your hospital complex and arrive late for doctor appointments, it could have a real financial impact on your healthcare system. You can create a wayfinding app to direct your patients.

Implementing such an app can do a lot of things for patients, like helping them find parking, the proper department inside your hospital, the travel time to that area of the hospital, and much more. Staff time and money will be saved as a result of everything.

7. Apps for clinical and diagnostic support

This is another kind of application that can make it easier for nurses and doctors to accomplish their jobs.

Specialists can manage patient health records, lab test results, and electronic charts with the use of clinical & diagnosis assistance applications. They can also search and store information about diseases, potential symptoms, and other things.

Your team members will be able to use a single integrated solution, freeing up their time for more crucial tasks rather than searching through numerous databases or seeking for physical papers.

8. Apps for urgent care

When your patients are in need of immediate medical assistance in an emergency, these applications are very helpful. With the use of an urgent care app, a patient can view the closest hospitals that can treat them, the most practical route, and the estimated trip time.

Because the patient would only be delivered to hospitals where specialists will be available who can aid, this may not only help people in distress but also the healthcare organisations.

Key characteristics for hospital mobile apps

A few of the crucial elements healthcare mobile app developers can assist you with building are listed below. The following are hospital application’s most valuable features that you should consider.

1. Hospital EHR/EMR access

In the United States, electronic health records (also known as patient medical records) are a crucial and extremely effective tool. EHR/EMR can be connected to several additional/auxiliary applications, giving hospital employees who use them full/concurrent or limited access to PHI with numerous unique details and options.

2. Management of medical appointments

Hospital applications may make it possible to handle the duties of hospital staff members, such as nursing obligations, doctor’s appointments, patient visits, etc., in a more flexible and economical manner. These appointment-management systems can be linked to admin dashboards or patient portals, allowing many participants to have their schedules simultaneously changed.

3. Prescription control

E-prescription (eRx) functionality is crucial for today’s pharmacy and healthcare industries. If these technologies comply with medical system interoperability standards, a hospital app can interact with a wide range of external systems and modules, including e-prescriptions and more. A search engine for specific prescriptions in nearby pharmacies, drug substitutes available under various brand names, current pricing, dosages, and more can all be considered additional functionality.

4. Voice and video chats

Protected video conferencing and an intelligent chat function are both essential components of hospital apps that provide telemedicine services. These characteristics enable elderly patients, patients with disabilities, patients who are immobile, and patients who live in remote locations to attend health consultations and obtain e-prescriptions remotely. For patients with complex illnesses or medical problems, a second-opinion platform is a well-liked hospital application choice.

5. Dashboards and notifications

All hospital staff positions have access to specialty-specific dashboards with key features, performance metrics, and task-specific controls. Notifications concerning tasks, events, appointments, reminders, and different kinds of medical data can be sent using these dashboards. Mobile push alerts are another possibility.

6. Wearables integration

Numerous wearables, including fitness trackers and wearable blood pressure monitors, are used in modern healthcare and wellness applications (professional-grade tools.) A hospital-backed app can be used to encourage patients to lead healthy lives and provide a variety of connections with personalised or brand-named wearables, including health statistics that can be automatically submitted to medical records, if necessary.

7. Other crucial details

A personalised hospital app might have dozens of extra features and choices, like…

  • Detailed patient, physician, and nursing profiles.
  • Accessibility choices (for differently-abled patient groups).
  • Options for biometric authentication
  • Logbooks or notebooks for patient observation.

Conclusion:

You must now have read through the general hospital applications for physicians and patients and comprehended the key factors involved in developing a hospital mobile app.

A variety of small and large hospitals intend to jump on board and take advantage of this potential, depending on technical improvements.

If you’re looking to develop a healthcare mobile application, get in touch with us today for a free quote.