“Take care of your body; it is the only place you have to live.”- Jim Rohn
Like it is rightly said, ‘a healthy body leads to healthy living’, having a healthy lifestyle is the biggest trend one can witness in present times.
These days mobile phones have become an indispensable gadget for people all over the world, flooded with apps of all kinds. And if it is the health apps we are talking about, there lies a plethora of benefits one can imagine for mankind. As per the IQVIA reports, there are more than 3 lakhs health-apps available on app stores and almost 200 being added on daily basis. Besides the numerous advantages one can get from these apps viz. personal fitness goals, tracking health vitals, getting virtual medical aids etc., they also fill the huge gap between traditional methods of getting medical assistance and the new-age digital healthcare.
Let us show you how these apps are simply a boon to the entire healthcare fraternity, patients, consumers and healthcare providers all put together.
Cost factor:
The cost of getting advanced and appropriate treatment is going through the roof ever since the rise of chronic diseases with no country left from getting impacted. Increased numbers of those seeking medical assistance regularly impose a great deal of pressure on the limited time and resources of the medical care providers. The situation is even more grave in developed countries like the US, Canada and many more, where more than 60-70% of the population is diagnosed with chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, asthma, heart diseases. Although the good news is that these illnesses can be kept under check by following a healthy routine and timely tracking of the vitals, but with the absence of patient engagement and sufficient awareness on these matters, both the patients and the healthcare providers undergo huge direct and indirect costs of billions of dollars every year. In such a scenario, having a mobile app giving all the right knowledge and hand holding to the patients with adequate supervision of the care providers can change the game completely, saving time, money and resources with increased involvement and self accountability among the masses.
Accessibility and effectiveness:
With healthcare going digital, every stage of your medical journey is covered by sophisticated and effective mobile apps giving amazing results in terms of getting appointments, booking medical examination slots, uploading and sharing the medical reports with the concerned care providers, getting expert consultations and so on. The routine checkups and preventive healthcare are a thing of the past and can now be accomplished with the help of healthcare apps on your mobile handsets. You can easily choose from the pool of free and premium apps like, MyFitnessPal (tracking calories and monitoring food intake), Sugar Sense Diabetes (checking sugar levels, glucose, carbs and more) to collect, manage and monitor your health information like never before. Research has made it quite clear that those who regularly track and monitor their health conditions are better off in proactively working towards maintaining a healthy lifestyle then those who are still dependent and negligent about the widespread chronic diseases steadily entering into their ecosystem in the absence of the best in class healthcare apps effectively keeping a check on your health environment.
Handling the ‘Big-data’:
The big-data, as the name itself says is all the patient information, medical history, vitals recorded, prescriptions and lab results put together. It is the first and the most important step in the journey of a patient and equally imperative for any healthcare professional to attend to his or her patients judiciously. The potential of big-data in healthcare is immense for carrying out research studies, providing personalized treatments, expediting the medical aid facility, analyzing important trends in health roadmap of regions, countries and continents. To be able to access desired information at the right time makes all the difference and today’s dedicated software allows medical professionals to key in patient records with utmost accuracy and efficiency for future references. Today’s software apps like Patientkeeper by Epic Systems allows physicians to access real time patients’ clinical data and provide immediate advice in the same respect.
Communication and Coordination:
Medical care is a two way process, involving equal participation of both the seeker and the provider. Besides the patient and professional relationships there are others too who have a major role to play like the medical staff, report analysers, physicians’ clinical team etc. Timing is the key in communication concerning healthcare. The timely advice provided to a patient or the timely sharing of patient reports and records to the respective doctors or the healthcare data management by medical staff and nurses in big hospitals and medical care centers, all of it require efficient modes of communication to bring about the desired coordination and synergy for the better delivery of medical services. The healthcare apps are not just limited to tracking and monitoring for the patients but are very much present for the administrative and coordination business of the healthcare industry.
Convenience and Confidential:
Remember the long waiting hours outside the doctor’s cabin? And the long queues for medical tests and examinations? All of such tiering protocols now get replaced by a single touch on your mobile phone from the comfort of your home and scheduling the same as per the doctor’s availability. Your mobile apps have literally changed the “Dr. on duty” to “Dr. on demand” possibility. The multiple visits, related costs and hassles are replaced by virtual medical appointments and reduced person-to-person meetings, making time and resources available to more people anytime anywhere. Digital data handling has reduced the number of intermediaries and related mishandling of personal information of patients, thus providing the much needed privacy and confidentiality while enhancing patient-doctor relationships in the long run.
Conclusion:
Healthcare awareness being at an all time high, digital healthcare is here to give us much more than our imaginations, taking care of our mental, physical and overall well being like never before. The above mentioned advantages are just the tip of an iceberg, while the list of the usage, the reach and the experience given by healthcare apps is exhausting. Although the impact of healthcare apps is massive, their success depends on many factors like safe and easy usage, robust design for future updations and data security. There is still a long way ahead in bringing digital health tools to the mainstream of many health organizations in coming years.
