There is a constant demand for medical care. This, along with the rise of chronic medical conditions and information technology worldwide, gives rise to the booming field of telehealth, where health and technology intersect. This has made healthcare one field to benefit from recent technological innovation. However, while opportunities arise and business booms, the medical field does have important and unique facets to keep in mind before working with or within it.
Therefore, before you decide to create a telehealth app or hire a company to develop and implement the software in your hospitals or clinics, you must weigh its pros and cons and be mindful of three things before you decide to begin:
#1 User Interface & Experience
The medical profession has different faces for different people. A patient without a medical education may not interact with the field or understand it as a physician with years of training does. Indeed different professionals within the medical system itself may not always see eye to eye. For this reason, the app’s interface should be simple and accessible.
For example, patients should easily be able to enter their medical information and physicians should just as easily be able to update the same information across multiple visits, streamlining and integrating the process all at once.
This is especially important because many older generations of patients and physicians may not be as familiar with modern mobile technology. As a result, there is the unfortunate potential for valuable human resources to lag behind. Furthermore, as the patient is the priority in medicine, the app design process should be focused on the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) and they should be tailored to patient use. As such, it should possess a seamless and streamlined process flow that uses all possible display characteristics and integration of other mobile features to provide a positive, supportive, and personal interface.
By nature, patients will tend to be cautious when it comes to inputting their sensitive information, but a well-designed app will make the patient feel empowered to do so. Lastly, the app should also be able to handle the large and frequent quantities of data traffic that accompany medical care every day.
#2 Security & Privacy
Among the pros and cons of telehealth is that it can be tricky to work with. Due to the sensitive nature of patient data, any app that collects such information is tightly regulated and needs to have an airtight privacy policy that is compliant with the relevant medical laws and guidelines of the country you are working within. As such, the process of setting up a healthcare app, especially if the process is uninformed or careless, can take a long time to ensure it is safe for all involved, and thus patience is required.
#3 Testing
As with any software, testing is important to weed out bugs and ensure intended function. However, healthcare introduces the critical dimension of patient privacy protected by law. Therefore, what may otherwise be a forgivable error or oversight can have profound legal consequences. Missing or inaccurately entered patient data or any that is released in a way that violates medical law can be detrimental to livelihoods and even lives.
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