As mobile health apps become more and more popular, they provide opportunities to improve access, quality, and clinical outcomes in the healthcare industry.
There are numerous types of healthcare applications available at app stores that benefit users on both ends of the spectrum. Each of these is proving useful in its niche, from telemedicine apps to healthcare mobile app development for apps that help manage equipment.
This blog lists the top categories of healthcare apps that will continue to be popular in the coming year.
Important Healthcare App Categories in The Market
Personal Health Record apps (medical diaries)
Unlike health tracking apps, the majority of which are used to maintain a healthy lifestyle, Personal Health Record apps serve a different purpose – monitoring diseases.
These types of apps serve as medical diaries – and can be either held on the patient’s device or integrated with the doctor’s or hospital’s apps.
This type of app can support the patient towards recovery or alert medical staff on a patient’s worsening condition as soon as the first symptoms appear.
Medical equipment management apps
A medical equipment management app aims to relieve hospitals and medical practices of manual stocktaking and equipment maintenance.
Medical equipment management apps support the sound functioning of clinics with features like automatic maintenance scheduling and inventory alerts
Hospital management apps
Hospital management apps assist hospital administration in day-to-day operations. These types of programs usually help with the automation of accounting, medical billing, claims, outpatient management, inventory, bed management, and others.
Hospital management apps often integrate with EHR apps to help simultaneously keep track of patient records.
Medical billing apps
Such apps help hospital accounting departments keep track of patient invoices, payments, and any other financial operations. It’s often integrated into bigger systems during mobile healthcare application development, such as EHR or hospital management apps.
Appointment Booking Apps
Appointment booking apps facilitate the online management of appointments at hospitals, clinics, and medical practices. Users can schedule appointments through the patient panel present on such apps.
They also have a separate notification system to set reminders of upcoming appointments for patients and doctors.
Telemedicine Apps
Telemedicine is already a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States alone, thanks to the world of convenience it brings to doctors and patients alike. Medical professionals can conduct their appointments with patients through this app.
They may also provide e-prescriptions and bill their patient directly through the app, depending on the features it may include.
E-Prescription Apps
e-Prescription apps eliminate the need for filling up paperwork and carrying documents from one place to another. The app enables care providers to track, renew, and cancel prescriptions for their patients.
The care provider and pharmacy can communicate more easily through such apps. The pharmacy’s system will automatically push the electronic prescriptions it will receive for processing and fulfilment.
Medical Imaging Apps
A medical imaging app is designed primarily to process MRI/CT/PET scans. They also contain the visualization functionality to design 3D models.
Some of their features include:
- 3D modelling: A medical technician can create a customized model for a particular patient using these programs. One way these apps are proving useful is by enabling technicians to generate an orthodontic treatment model that can be generated and printed by a 3D modelling application before treatment begins.
- Printing and designing medical components: With this app, you can print equipment like coronary stents that are used in cardiovascular surgery, or body parts, such as artificial limbs.
Medical Diagnosis Apps
An app designed for medical diagnosis allows doctors to exchange anonymized records in order to fill in any information gaps. These enable them to make an accurate diagnosis by analyzing all available patient data using AI.
Users can also check their symptoms with medical diagnosis apps, so they can decide whether to go to the doctor. These apps gained popularity during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Medical Research Apps
Researchers use medical research apps primarily to share their findings with the medical community and to educate patients. Using these apps is common for training medical personnel and for supporting diagnoses when there aren’t any similar clinical cases present for internal reference.
Electronic Health Record Apps
Medical clinics and hospitals frequently use EHR apps. An EHR app is similar to a customer relationship management system but tailored to the medical field. It is built to gather patient data, such as medication dosage, doctors’ prescriptions, and surgical history.
Such apps help with payment and invoicing through a financial module integrated at the time of mobile healthcare application development. They also contain a patient portal that gives patients access to their medical history, including consultations, records, and prescriptions.
There are multiple types of EHR apps, such as:
- Electronic Medical Record apps (EMR) – These store medical records for patients, such as patient’s recovery course details, medication types and dosage, and procedure-related information.
- Electronic Patient Record Apps (EPR) – These save patient details for hospital use, to store and process their patient information.
Conclusion
The healthcare app segment is undoubtedly flourishing due to the multitude of advantages healthcare apps are bringing to their users. This industry’s growth is showing no signs of stopping, and these are the major types of healthcare apps with a rapidly-increasing user base and an increasing demand for healthcare mobile app development service.
