The healthcare system can be extremely challenging for patients to navigate, and providers haven’t always done enough to streamline the patient experience. While the internet facilitates the spread of health-related misinformation, it also makes it easier for patients to take a more active role in their treatment.
Healthcare organizations are only beginning to explore the possibilities of mobile health solutions, but healthcare apps are already changing the ways patients seek care and communicate with their providers. In this article, we’ll cover three key effects of mobile healthcare apps on the modern patient experience.
Meeting Patients Where They Are
While in-person appointments obviously still have a role to play in healthcare, mobile healthcare apps can help patients by providing information, answering questions, offering medication reminders, and performing various other tasks that keep the patient engaged in their own care. Mobile apps make these functions far more convenient for the average patient.
Rather than picking up a brochure or pamphlet during an appointment, for example, patients can now pull up the same information on their phone in just a few seconds. Making information more accessible is one of the most important benefits of mobile healthcare apps in terms of the patient experience.
Estimating Wait Times
Long waits are one of the most common causes of patient dissatisfaction, and patients may not always know which urgent care centers have availability. Mobile health apps can provide that information on a smartphone or tablet, giving patients the chance to check wait times before deciding where to go.
Improving Patient Engagement
A patient who only interacts with their doctor at the occasional appointment is far less likely to maintain their health than one who is actively involved in their care. In fact, higher levels of patient engagement are strongly associated with better health outcomes.
While mobile apps can’t replace doctors and nurses, they can help patients maintain their engagement even when they’re away from the clinic. Healthcare professionals can only accomplish so much at a given appointment—getting patients to build good habits and stick to them can have an incredible effect on long-term outcomes. Providers can also monitor patient progress and stay in contact with them to continue personalizing their health plans over time.
Mobile health apps are still struggling to increase adoption, but it’s clear that they have the potential to completely change the way patients approach their health. These are just a few of the most important effects of contemporary healthcare apps on the patient experience—with the consistent progress of healthcare software development, it’s impossible to predict what the field will look like in just five or ten years.
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