The Impact of Mobile Health Apps on Healthcare
As their physician your responsibility is to urge patients to use healthcare apps carefully and with a bit of caution and common sense. They should read any privacy policy before downloading healthcare apps.
In spite of concerns that mHealth apps would impersonalise patient-physician relationships, or that the humanistic essence of medicine would be lost, the benefits of them far outweigh any possible negative impacts. Here are just a few:
They help patients to manage their health
Through mobile apps, a patient can be reminded about taking medication, arrange an appointment, report symptoms, view lab results and communicate with doctor – the net benefit of which is enhanced patient engagement and better patient outcomes, by making patients’ contact with their healthcare providers easier. Health apps for patients can be excellent tools, but those that do nothing to motivate use, or are not user-friendly, generally fail to go to market or are subsequently abandoned if they make it there. Apps that come to market often go through clinical trialling early in their development, in order to iron out problems with use. Another recent study found that patient-centric mHealth apps have the potential to improve medication adherence. Additional improvements could be made by creating mHealth apps that work with other healthcare tools and devices for better coordination between physicians and patients – saving time and money for individuals and providers alike, and potentially reducing medical visits caused by medication nonadherence.
They help patients to stay in touch with their doctors
Some mobile healthcare apps help patients book appointments and receive treatment, just at the click of a button but also through a more economical and efficient method compared with expensive in-person consultations – the 24/7 telehealth consultation. Others allow continual contact between doctors and patients, through messaging and questions, which saves the patient leaving their home and saves the doctor time spent on administrative tasks. This way, an iPhone app can keep a primary care doctor abreast of a patient’s activity levels, as well as the unseen trends in symptoms and vital sign readings that don’t become apparent during a store-and-forward visit. Most current mHealth apps, however, generally augment their cellphone data streams with the delivery of readings from other wireless appliances, including pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs or glucose monitors that send their results straight to the practitioners for a more comprehensive snapshot of a person’s health situation. Yet, it also needs to be remembered that not all users are equally tech-savvy, and with digital literacy so important to these tools’ effectiveness, physicians must educate their patients on the best way to harness the technologies to minimise risk while maximising their value.
They help patients to keep track of their health
Through mobile health apps, patients are able to keep in communication with their doctors, reminding them to keep appointments and to get their test results, as well as to share their health-related data with them in real time in order to help them improve the accuracy of their diagnoses. Apps can also enable patients to self-track disease progression, with many studies finding that, by fostering intervention adherence, apps can improve treatment for chronic conditions. It’s important to stress that, although mobile health apps can be a valuable tool for patients to manage their health, they should also be designed cautiously – they must incorporate patient engagement principles such as behavioural theories for more effective user engagement, and they must be integrated into existing healthcare services to facilitate the exchange of data between all users of the technology.
They help patients to stay motivated
In this way, mobile health apps can keep patients up-to-date with the latest information about their care and in contact with healthcare providers – which is especially important when the therapy is very demanding or complicated, such as when medications are required several times a day or if the patient is supposed to keep scheduled doctor’s visits. If you think not taking medications isn’t that bad, medication non-adherence costs US healthcare systems an estimated $5,271-$52,341 annually per patient. Health apps with reminders can reduce that cost as they keep the patients up-to-date about medication usage by helping them to remember about their medicines intake, appointments and cancer screenings, and provide tips on healthier lifestyle. But keep in mind that not all patients and doctors have equal digital savvy. Their lack of expertise with digital technologies can be a hurdle to the adoption of health apps, and we need health apps that take in to account the various levels of computer literacy among their users, or designers will be developing apps that are poorly suited to their potential users. Similarly, accurate ratings are needed in clinical evaluations that will take in to account such factors to keep from rating health apps poorly when in fact they can have substantial benefits.
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