Top 5 Features That Boost Patient Engagement in Hospital Mobile Apps

How Does Patient Engagement Help?

1. Educating Patients About Medical Conditions

Most people are unaware of how to manage their health. Knowledge of diseases and their causes is surprisingly uncommon despite numerous web pages and educational videos freely available online. So, it helps patients to know more about their illness and the type of lifestyle to be led.   

This is where mobile apps for patient engagement come into play. They serve as an educational platform for people to know everything they need about self-care. Furthermore, healthcare providers can also connect with their patients on mobile health management services applications to share relevant content for making patients aware. Information such as the kinds of food to eat or avoid, what exercises to do, and other lifestyle advice goes a long way in improving patient health.  

2. Improves Patient Involvement in Care

As mentioned earlier, an absence of two-way interaction only involves patients listening to doctors’ orders. But custom health app development has produced HIPAA compliant solutions that empower patients to have a greater say in their care. It’s no longer just listening to your doctor.  

mhealth platforms even allow patients to access their health data and discuss it with providers. Test results, imagery, scans, and prescriptions can be viewed on hospital mobile apps and discussed with physicians. The doctors then would explain the nature of the disease and how best to deal with it.  

The patients can resolve any queries and talk about out-of-pocket expenses, period of recovery, medication side-effects, the impact of disease on personal & professional life, alternative treatments, and so on. Numerous practice management platforms often feature a healthcare app for doctors and patients to interact throughout the care journey.  

3. Improves Management of Chronic Conditions

Ailments like diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease can’t be cured with a single course of medication. Patients need to make changes to their lifestyles and adhere to strict diets and medication. Moreover, they must also get regular consultations where physicians might alter their prescriptions.  

Mhealth solutions that foster doctor-patient interaction help people stay in touch with their physicians for continued support. Platforms like these are becoming increasingly common in medical app development. They remind users of follow-up consultations, prescription refills and notify them if it’s time to take their pills. In other words, mobile medical apps play a direct role in improving healthcare management and alleviating chronic conditions.  

4. Patient Feedback Helps in Customizing Care

Corporations in every industry have been assessing market trends to improve their services, making sense for healthcare to do the same. Mobile hospital apps that collect feedback help providers understand patient requirements. Furthermore, healthcare analytics solutions that can assess all the data from patient feedback can reveal ideas for customizing treatments to suit individual patient needs.  

Personalized care is increasingly viewed as having better outcomes than a conventional, one-size-fits-all approach. Valuable feedback helps doctors make informed decisions about tailoring the course of treatment that produces the best clinical outcomes.   

Patient engagement empowers people to know their health better and doctors to improve the quality of care. It is becoming an integral part of mobile healthcare application development as more providers adopt it. However, as more vendors develop hospital mobile apps, there’s bound to be a large variety of features available. So, if you’re a medical professional looking for a suitable mhealth solution, there are a few features that are must-haves to improve your engagement with patients.  

Top 5 Features to Boost Patient Engagement in Hospital Mobile Apps

1. Appointment Scheduling Management

This is one of the most coveted features that help both the patients and the providers. A mobile healthcare app that lets people schedule and reschedules appointments minimizes no-shows. Missed appointments are one of the biggest causes of increased healthcare spending in the United States, and they have a significant impact on the health of patients with chronic diseases.  

Mobile healthcare applications with this feature allow patients to schedule consultations at their convenience. Doctors could also accommodate changing timings with a few clicks.  

2. Patient Portal

These are secure electronic health records that patients can access to get a bird’s eye view of their health situation. Investment in cloud computing in healthcare allows people to access their medical data from mobile apps or other devices from anywhere. They can view it in real-time without downloading it into device memory.  

Patients can view any recent changes to their records if they’ve had tests, treatments, or prescriptions. Having an accessible patient portal engenders best practices in medical records management.  

3. Video Calls & Chats

As the name suggests, patient communication engagement is, after all, an engagement between people. Any such activity is continuously improved with video calls and chats. Mobile healthcare solutions with a video calling feature let people have virtual consultations, and the presence of live video adds a human touch to an otherwise mundane voice call.  

Furthermore, a chat option lets patients clear any doubts about medication, diet, habits, or even test results with their providers. In other words, video calls and chat are some of the best ways for hospital mobile apps to improve patient education and engagement.  

4. Push Notifications

This feature is beneficial for both doctors and patients. A hospital management system software that offers this feature would notify doctors of changes to appointment schedules. On the other hand, it can also remind patients about upcoming appointments and tell them if it’s time to take their medication.   

This is one of the perks of implementing healthcare automation into mobile healthcare solutions. Both providers and patients can be reminded about important things automatically and have a better experience overall.  

5. Integration With Wearable Health tech

Wearable health technology has rolled out smartwatches and even garments that monitor your vitals in real-time. Leading medical informatics solutions coupled with mobile apps in healthcare could assess this data and shed light on patients’ overall condition.   

EMRs with seamless healthcare interoperability makes it easy for doctors to fetch medical records. This kind of electronic data exchange coupled with the integration of wearable technology allows providers to make informed decisions about treatment. When hospital apps for doctors can get patients’ vitals in real-time, it reduces the number of consultations required. In other words, the integration of wearable technology with mobile healthcare solutions is a type of automated engagement between providers and patients.  

Conclusion

Mobile health care solutions certainly have a future in the medical industry. They offer a vast plethora of abilities that are accessible with a few clicks. Hospital management systems that can improve patient engagement can go a long way in cementing better outcomes for patients.  

Better yet, if hospital mobile apps can integrate features that improve doctor-patient interactions, it’ll unlock new possibilities for efficient population health management. As mobile health application development and hospital software systems evolve side by side, they could converge to address some of the biggest challenges in healthcare.