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Guide to Hospital App Development [Technologies, Ideas, and Types]

You can’t imagine a hospital without operating on technology.

Be it EMR/EHR, patient monitoring, telemedicine, or online appointment booking, there is either the mobile app or web app that makes tasks for both clinicians and patients more smoother and efficient.

With hospital management becoming a tedious task while already frustrated patients take a toll on clinicians and other staff, the most reliable and secure investment with high ROI for hospitals is hospital app development!

For example,

  • “Can I visit your physician online?” – a Patient
  • “Can I get my weekly shift details automatically every Sunday at 6 pm?” – a Nurse
  • “Can I get my appointment details for a day at 6 am every day?” – a Physician
  • “Can I book the doctor’s appointment online for my kid?” – a Mother

If you don’t have answers to such questions, you should seriously consider hospital app development.

This must’ve hit you hard!

But keep reading, you’ll find how a tiny mobile app streamlines all of the clinical workflows and business workflows you have in your healthcare center.

Why Should You Prefer Hospital App Development?

For someone who knows the use cases of the mobile app, it is really shocking and unbelievable that restaurants serving food have mobile apps, but hospitals serving life don’t have apps!

Anyway, let’s talk about why you should build an app for hospitals or build a hospital management app.

1. All healthcare services, offerings, and programs in one place

All modern hospitals and clinics are offering several wellness services and programs beyond healthcare services.

This includes employee wellness programs, mental health programs, yoga sessions, physiotherapy, labs, accommodation, meals, etc.

A hospital management app brings all of these services and programs under one umbrella and makes sure patients and their family members find these services.

Additionally, it also lets them interact with the hospital very easily without being physically present at the hospital.

For instance, after the hospital releases the patient, he can join the daily yoga session organized by your wellness team – from his home, by just visiting the hospital app.

This is just one example of how a hospital app development centralizes all of your services.

2. Online doctor appointments

People visiting hospitals or clinics without prior appointments have their mental condition set at the default mode – Damn! I have to wait for hours in the queue for my turn!

Thus, all patients prefer to book a prior appointment with the physicians for any healthcare service – except for an emergency.

And you already know how difficult it is to book appointments via call for both patients and call recipients.

Instead, the patient can book the appointment by himself at his preferred time by using a mobile app.

The real ease is when there is a need to modify the appointment, both patients and physicians can change the appointment date and time.

It also automatically notifies them via SMS and email.

Imagine the same scenario with a call recipient!

3. Online clinic, virtual clinic, or virtual hospital

In the past few years, patients across the world have found online clinics or telemedicine apps safer, affordable, convenient, and rapid.

According to a recent survey, one out of every 3 Canadians prefers to opt-in for telemedicine rather than an in-person visit to the hospital.

And almost 70% of Canadians believe that telemedicine or virtual care is the future of healthcare.

You can consider telemedicine ideas for your hospital app development.

It’ll help your clinical staff to connect with patients remotely via secure video calls, voice calls, or chat options.

Also, the built-in telemedicine capabilities of the app enable physicians to write and share notes and ePrescription.

The seamless integration with EHR and EMR software eases the physicians’ work to an extreme level.

4. Hospital staff management

Hospital staff management is the biggest administrative challenge in the healthcare industry.

With several departments and several part-time & full-time employees in each department, it is nearly impossible to manage the staff manually or even through Excel sheets.

HR management software is one solution but yes, it is costly and you don’t enjoy the ownership of it.

But the hospital app development is a breakthrough here.

With dedicated features of staff management in your hospital app’s admin or HR panel, the HR team can plan a weekly roster, share it with staff members, coordinate with the teams, manage their attendance and leaves, and carry out payrolls.

It also enables staff members to – check out their daily tasks, and weekly roster, coordinate with other team members, manage leaves, and much more.

This way you can avoid moving along the floor to manage your staff!

5. Centralized information or ePHI access

On average, healthcare professionals spend 1.8 hours every day searching and managing the information and various data of the patients.

This tedious and time-consuming process also increases the possibility of medical errors.

The hospital management app allows healthcare professionals to access the data of a particular patient – directly from the patient’s profile.

Furthermore, healthcare professionals can check the medical history of the patients, and various report results, and even request patients or their family members to upload the necessary documents or images.

You can also implement automation to your hospital app to cut down many more efforts of healthcare professionals.

For instance, when a physician writes the ePrescription for a patient, it automatically gets stored under the patient’s profile and the app automatically sends it to the caretaker of the patient and also the pharmacy.

6. Next-level of patient experience or customer experience

Customer experience is the biggest challenge in the healthcare industry, there is no doubt about it.

According to PWC, only 49% of consumers agree that the customer experience in healthcare is satisfactory.

One of the major barriers hospitals and clinics are experiencing is poor communication and coordination between the healthcare team, customer service team, patients, and insurers.

For example, to handle a claim, the customer service team needs to establish a link between patients, the healthcare team, and insurers.

The customer service team also struggles to answer the queries of the customers as it lacks many resources and information that are only available to the healthcare team and insurers.

A hospital management app with dedicated features for customer service in the admin panel and a chatbot for customers to get answers within seconds solves the age-old healthcare challenge in a single shot.

From claim management to query management and dispute management, the customer support team would now be able to answer every query with easy access to information and easy coordination with other teams.

Top 8 Trending App Ideas for Hospital App Development

There are many different types of apps that you can prefer for hospital app development.

Some of the most common types include:

Types of hospital apps

1. Appointments Scheduling

These apps enable patients to schedule and manage their appointments with healthcare providers.

2. Medical Records and Access

These apps provide patients with access to their health records – anytime from anywhere.

3. Hospital Directories and Maps

These apps provide patients with information on the various departments and services available at the hospital.

It also helps them to navigate the facility from the in-built maps and directions.

4. Prescription Refill and Medication Management

These apps enable patients to request refills for their medications and keep track of their medication plans.

📌 Check out our Agile Methodology on: ePrescription software development

5. Virtual Consultations

These apps let patients connect with care providers remotely for any health and medication-related concerns.

6. Emergency and Crisis Support

These apps provide patients with access to emergency and crisis support services in real-time.

7. Hospital Staff Management App

These apps enable you to manage your both clinical and administrative tasks more effectively and efficiently.

You can assign, track, and manage their various day-to-day activities and other responsibilities.

📌 Check out our comprehensive guide on: Build healthcare staffing app

8. Wellness App

These apps allow patients to manage and improve their overall wellness (from mental health to physical health) without leaving their homes.

And this is one of the best ways to improve the patient care experience.

Overall, hospital app development is the way to bring patients and healthcare staff under the same roof without compromising cost, time, and resources.

Which Additional Technologies You Should Consider To Develop a Hospital App?

In addition to the development of a hospital app, there are lots of other trending technologies that you should keep in mind in your project to provide the best possible experience to patients and hospital staff.

Some of these technologies include:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Undeniably, AI and ML are transforming healthcare.

These powerful technologies have a single purpose – to provide personalized suggestions and guidance to app users with large-scale data.

For example,

You can use AI-powered chatbots to provide ideal solutions to patients’ queries regarding your hospital and services.

You can use ML algorithms to predict which patients are at health risk and alert the care team accordingly.

📌 Check out our comprehensive guide on: AI in radiology

2. Blockchain

This technology can help you in overcoming the biggest fear for any healthcare organization – a patient data breach.

Because it lets you store and manage patient data more securely along with ensuring that it is accessible only to authorized people.

3. Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

IoT or wearable device is the best way to keep an eye on your patient – at any time from any corner of the world.

These devices are used to collect real-time data on patients’ vital body signs such as blood pressure, oxygen level, pulse rate, etc.

This real-time information enables clinical staff to gain valuable insights into patients’ health and overall well-being.

📌 Check out our case study on: How to build healthcare IoT app?

4. Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR)

This technology is all about improving the patient care experience.

It lets you provide immersive and interactive experiences to patients. This helps patients to better their conditions and treatments.

5. RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

This powerful technology has huge potential to bring peace of mind to your clinical and administrative staff.

Because it allows you to automate computer-based repetitive tasks such as documentation, data entry, sending emails, etc.

This not only saves operational time and cost but also reduces physician burnout.

📌 Check out our comprehensive guide on: RPA in healthcare

Want to Develop a Hospital App on a Pro Level? Get It Done with Canadian Standards and American Innovation

We have been very active in the healthcare industry for more than 8 years.

With our in-house app developers, UI/UX designers, business analysts, compliance consultants, QA engineers, and AI and ML experts, we’re clever enough to develop any kind of mobile and web apps for your hospital and clinic.

Talking about compliance and security, well, it’s our top priority.

And that’s why we accommodate dedicated healthcare compliance experts for every health tech project we perform!

So, let’s have a productive discussion to build a hospital app or virtual clinic app.

Meanwhile, you can check our suite of IT solutions for hospitals.