⁠Top Features in Healthcare Apps

Are you planning to launch a healthcare app in the market to target a wide audience? Creating a healthcare app is beyond just giving a skeleton to an app idea. The true development of a healthcare app lies in the integration of new and important features in healthcare apps. A good healthcare app has the ability to act like a bridge between real-world patients and hospitals. 

However, for this scaffold to be realized, it is important to create a feature-rich healthcare app. In the year 2023, the number of users in the healthcare app user base reached the mark of 311 million globally. Given that the healthcare app sector is looking at tremendous growth with a double-digit CAGR, this user base is only increasing. 

In a world where there are millions of health apps, you need to offer unique and trendy features in your new healthcare app for it to be a long-term success. Below, you will get a sneak peek into the must-have features in healthcare apps that your healthcare app development team should include in the new app framework.

Important Health App Usage Insights

Knowing some crucial market and usage statistics for the leading top healthcare apps in the USA is important as it gives you the vantage point to choose important features for your new healthcare app. Features of healthcare apps are very crucial in today’s medicine and health sector as they provide the platform to support the achievement of global health objectives. 

Even the World Health Organisation has spoken about the advantages that smartphones and health apps offer in bringing healthcare services to people all around the world. mHealth apps are used extensively, and it is noted that nearly one out of two patients use healthcare apps on their smartphones. 

When the revenue generated by healthcare apps is studied, it is seen that in the year 2023, people spent $716/minute on healthcare apps.  With the spending of money on digital healthcare services increasing year on year, it is the responsibility of a healthcare app development company to offer important and advanced healthcare app features to the users.

The Most Trendy And Necessary Features of Healthcare Apps

In the list of healthcare app development features, new features, and services are added to the evolution of technology. With new trends in technology like AI, AR, Machine Learning In Healthcare Industry, and Deep Learning, mobile healthcare apps now offer a plethora of new features that were not available before.

Healthcare app developers need to keep up with the new features that are now part of the best healthcare apps. With the inclusion of necessary features in healthcare apps, the performance of a healthcare app improves in real time.

Health Activity Tracker

People use healthcare apps to track their fitness levels in real time. A health vitals and activity tracker are important features in healthcare apps that play an instrumental role in increasing patient engagement levels. For fitness-tracking apps, the user penetration rate in 2024 will be 11.63 percent. 

Therefore, to develop a healthcare app that appeals to users and integrates into their lifestyle, it is important to add an accurate and interactive health activity tracker to your healthcare app. The integration of a blood pressure tracker, step counter, heart rate monitor, and SPO2 tracker in the healthcare app can make it very usable.

Symptom Checker

When users download a healthcare app on their smartphones, they usually look for an app that can act like a digital health assistant. AI technology can create a health assistant that tracks your health symptoms and predicts the possible disease. A custom healthcare app development company uses big data analytics and predictive algorithms to find out the health risks accurately. 

According to studies, it is believed that nearly 77 percent of young adults use their phones to search for possible health conditions. The inclusion of a symptom checker in the healthcare app can, therefore, increase the appeal and usage of the app across a wider audience. The symptom checker should also ideally tell the patient about their health risk level so that he can make the decision to visit the doctor when needed.

Appointment Manager

Custom healthcare mobile development companies also develop a doctor appointment app and telemedicine apps that help users connect with real-life doctors for their diagnosis and treatment. The comprehensive guide to healthcare app development should allow the user to search for good doctors from a vast network and then schedule a health appointment at his convenience. The healthcare app should allow the user to book a virtual or real-life appointment with a certified doctor in a few easy steps. 

The healthcare app development team should also add features that let users look for the available time slots from their consulting doctors. Moreover, the app should have features that remind people about the ongoing status of their doctor consultations.

This appointment scheduling and tracking feature helps doctors and patients improve their healthcare experience. Doctors get to reach more patients, and patients consult doctors more easily when a good healthcare app mediates the process.

Related Blog: A Complete Guide On Doctor Appointment App Development

Video Conferencing

When developing a health app that has telemedicine capabilities, the focus needs to be on creating a strong interface for calling and video conferencing. The idea is to bring doctors and patients closer, even on virtual platforms, so that digital health services can achieve their objectives. For a proper consultation, a doctor and patient need face-to-face interaction. The doctor might need to see physical symptoms and review the patient’s health. 

The patient also has more trust in the doctor when he or she can interact with him properly. Therefore, the video calling feature in the healthcare app is an important addition that improves healthcare service accessibility.

When video calls, and chat get the support of an extensive medical professional community, the telemedicine app becomes highly successful. In-app chats, calls, and video consultations are important for people who live in remote areas or are facing mobility issues.

Also Read: How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Healthcare App?

Electronic Health Record Integration

Another feature the team must consider during custom mHealth app development is the digital conversion and integration of medical history into the app. The aim of mobile health application development is to create an app where people can access every piece of information related to their health conditions.

For patient information and easy tracking of health progress, it is important that a health app has EHR integration as a feature. EHR integration features are needed in telemedicine apps, doctor-on-demand apps, and online pharmacy apps. 

Many hospitals and clinic management app in the modern era create their own healthcare app to help in EHR integration so that the health records of their patients remain safe and accessible in the cloud space. EHR integration helps improve the efficiency of the treatment process and further consultations with the doctor. 

The patient can see all his crucial health information through a simple app, and the doctor can refer to the patient’s medical history at any time. The doctor taking a virtual consultation can also see the EHR portal to tweak and improve the treatment process and outcomes. This is an important feature in healthcare apps as it keeps all the health information in one place and allows better coordination between different stakeholders.

Wearable Integration

According to some recent studies, 92 percent of people who own smartwatches do so for better fitness and health tracking. Keeping this in mind, it is crucial to include wearable integration as a feature in your healthcare app.

With healthcare IOT app development, your healthcare app developer can create a portal that allows the healthcare app to function in line with smartwatches and other smart wearable devices. Wearable integration should be smooth and seamless so that the user remains informed about his current health state at all times. 

With wearable integration, people can access their health information, reminders, alerts, and other healthcare app features on their devices. Such a feature can help them use the healthcare app at all times, like a constant health companion. Wearable integration is also a profitable feature with which your business can venture into the healthcare wearables market. This market reached the $60 billion mark in 2023 and continues to grow at present.

Payment Integration

To manage virtual consultations, medicine delivery, and other payable features on the healthcare app,  the healthcare app development company also needs to look at ways to secure payment integration. It is important to take up HIPAA-compliant mobile app development to offer high-security payment gateways in the healthcare app. 

The payments should be smooth and easy so patients can avail themselves of all the healthcare services that the app has to offer. Multiple and flexible payment options are a must in a good healthcare app. This is important for the management of doctor-patient interaction and for creating revenue through the healthcare app.

Conclusion

A healthcare app can be the most useful app that users have on their phones and wearables. The usability level and benefits of the healthcare apps depend on the features and services it offers. A healthcare app development team should study the trends and choose the most necessary and novel features to include in new healthcare app development trends. To learn more about the best features in different healthcare app types, contact Comfygen’s team today.