Key Takeaways:
- The development of medication management apps requires a tech-savvy agile team with extensive experience in the healthcare industry. You’re in for a big treat if they have the ability in a variety of fields, like development, design, QA, and DevOps.
- When developing a medication management app, pay close attention to notifications. There are numerous original ways to make notifications useful and inconspicuous at the same time.
- You should think about establishing a full ecosystem of connected apps that function across devices and platforms if you want to make a medication management app that truly stands out.
About 50% of prescriptions in the United States are not taken properly due to the difficulty of drug administration. Each year, non-adherence causes 125,000 needless deaths, $300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs, and hospitalization risks.
A medication management app can help avoid all that and aid users in maintaining a regular drug schedule. Such an app assists patients and physicians in tracking drug intake, reminding them when to get refills, displaying pharmaceutical information, and much more.
Medication management app development is a big market opportunity for healthcare organizations given the rapid growth of telehealth services and the e-health sector. However, there are a lot of factors the business should be aware of before deciding to develop a medication management application. The type of app, its functionality, users, target market, platform, and e-prescription software features are some of the key factors. Let’s go into more depth about each of them.
How does a medication management app function?
Planning and organization are key components in managing medications. Patients must:
- List all prescription medications and their dosages.
- Make a timetable for when drugs should be taken and make a pill organizer akin to a dosette box with compartments for different times of the day and days of the week.
- To provide a doctor a copy of the schedule, make one.
A medication management application can automate all of the above.
Making a medication management application with the intention of tracking or recalling the consumption is possible. The two have a significant difference in that the first functions much like phone reminders for critical chores (such as organisers), whilst the second requires the patient’s action to confirm the intake.
Making a medication management app assumes that it will accomplish all of that and a few additional tasks. A quality software ought to always:
- Indicate the active medication and the directions.
- Have a schedule for intake
- Remind people to take in and refuel
- Follow the patient’s intake and display the dosage
- Become part of the healthcare system so that the doctors can check what medications the patient is currently taking.
- Protect patient health information (PHI) and adhere to the laws of the nations for which it was designed.
However, the app’s complete functionality is directly tied to the users who will utilise it. Users of medicine apps fall into four primary groups:
- High-risk patients who need to closely monitor their health and medication consumption (patients after a heart attack, with increased blood pressure or blood sugar level disorders, etc.)
- Patients who are given high-risk medications, or those that have serious side effects from overdosing and affect mental processes
- Elderly persons and those with memory problems may both forget to take their medications.
- Parents or carers who want to control their children’s medication intake
Medications management apps versus medicine reminders apps
The majority of “medication reminder” apps essentially provide SMS warnings. However, the built-in features of a smartphone might quickly take the role of these apps.
The following category is for business owners who wish to develop a medication management application and want to know how current options differ from one another.
Three categories of medication remembrance software exist:
- Simple medication reminders (SMRs) are apps that people can use to keep track of their medications. They provide some basic features including adjustable scheduling and individualized alarms.
- Advanced medication reminders (AMRs) – These add time zone support, tracking of late and missed doses, medication images, and user notes to the standard SMR capabilities.
- Medication management apps (MMAs) – These incorporate elements from the two preceding categories and let users manage and store health data, create numerous accounts, and exchange details with physicians.
Features that are necessary for medication management apps
What factors influence the use of medication management apps? It is the mobile application’s feature set and functionality.
Patients primarily have the following requirements from a prescription or medication management app.
- He or she obtains it as frequently and in the necessary amount.
- Its active components are always known.
- It will notify you when a refill is necessary.
Must have features of MMAs (medication management apps)
1. Digital sheduling
With the use of digital scheduling, users can make monthly, weekly, and daily schedules by entering basic prescription information such as physical descriptions of pills, names, dosages, and when and how to take them.
2. Smart remider
Smart notifications that appear when it’s time to take your prescriptions. Till the patient takes their dose, they continue to buzz and dinge. Users of sophisticated reminder apps can put off taking their medications. Reminders should ideally also be usable by those with hearing and vision impairments.
3. An interagtion algorithm
If newly scheduled medications are incompatible with previously scheduled medications, an interaction algorithm gives warning messages. Users of sophisticated drug management software can enter personal health information like allergies or pregnancy.
4. Prescription renewal alerts
Alerts for prescription renewal inform users of mobile apps when their prescriptions need to be renewed. These are typically just alerts. Users occasionally receive a form to complete in order to request a medication refill after receiving alerts. A doctor receives this form directly.
5. A pill identifier
There are two different types of pill identifiers exist. The less convenient method asks the user to enter the details of the pill, after which the app searches a database to produce a list of pills with comparable details. The more user-friendly kind enables a user to upload a snapshot of a pill so that a database of pills with comparable properties can be searched using an image analysis algorithm.
6. Location search
Users can utilise location search to locate the closest pharmacy that has the needed medication in stock. A navigational map is included in some applications.
7. A notes field
Users can include recommendations from a doctor, detailed instructions for taking medications, and a list of potential adverse effects in the notes box.
8. Missed medication tracker
A missed dosage tracker logs whether a user took their medication. The complete therapy procedure can be tracked with the use of these records.
9. Sharing
When someone else is assisting a patient with drug management, sharing is a need. Users of pharmaceutical apps can export their schedules for sharing with family members and medical professionals.
Stages of medication management app development
A specialised medication management application can be created by an accomplished team of software engineers.
If you choose to create a medication management app, you must have a thorough project strategy that covers four key phases.
1. Defining the project
It is essential to establish the scope of your prospective medicine tracking app at this point, as well as to look into user needs, rank the app’s features, and choose whether it will be available for Android and iOS.
2. Planning
Be prepared to adhere to HIPAA standards and laws for the handling and storage of health data while creating an app. Information security is the key concern here. API security necessitates the use of encryption algorithms, multi-factor authentication, and other methods. You must decide on the cloud platform, third-party integrations, and technology stack at this point.
A team of experts, including developers, UI/UX designers, DevOps engineers, and testers are needed to create a medication management app. The calibre of the team you select will determine the final outcome.
3. Design and development
To ensure a smooth process, thorough project planning entails setting goals at every stage. A UI/UX designer develops wireframes and prototypes for app visualisation after the parameters have been established. An intuitive user experience will allow consumers to interact with your programme and discover features without undue stress or effort.
The engineering team receives the wireframes and prototypes after that. Make sure the app development partner you select are knowledgeable and skilled.
To ensure that the apps you are going to develop can easily be adapted for changes, be used by millions of daily active users, and offer a high level of data protection, Arkenea places a strong emphasis on flexibility, security, and scalability,. Although all apps need to be scalable, the most important considerations when creating a healthcare app are adapting to the rapidly evolving healthcare legislation, user data security, and protection.
4. Launching and maintainance
Your medication management app should be extensively tested before going live. Quality control ensures that the app is free of errors and malfunctions. In order to guarantee the greatest app performance and user experience, application maintenance also refers to routine testing, updates, and bug fixes.
Cost of Medication Management Apps Development
Depending on the intricacy of the software, you could want to budget between $60,000 and $80,000 for an MVP(minimum viable product). You would need to invest closer to $200,000–$300,000 to produce a medication management app similar to Medisafe.
Factors Affecting the Price of Developing a Medication Management App
Without performing the pre-development processes, it is impossible to specify a precise figure, but Arkenea can identify the elements that will affect the final cost.
- The back-end and front-end development technologies
- Potential for scaling
- Ready-to-market product maturity, or MVP
- The platform on which it is meant (Android, iOS)
- Amount of users on a single account
- Adding functionality to the current healthcare software or developing a stand-alone solution
- Government-mandated standards and technologies
These are factors should be consider to get the development cost of medication management application.
Final thought
When it’s necessary to contract out the creation of medical equipment, go with a business that has a track record of success. Modern patients require a medication management assistance in order to achieve better results. They not only improve the organisation and effectiveness of the patients’ care, but they also give the doctors the chance to evaluate progress and adjust the course of treatment as necessary. Additionally, they raise patients’ awareness levels and give them the information they need to participate in the process more effectively.
Before looking into how to develop a drug management application, there are numerous technical and legal considerations. The good thing is that you don’t have to because the Arkenea team is prepared to handle all of those problems. Get in touch with our experienced team right away to explore how we can make medicine administration for your patients simple and successful.