Different Types of mHealth Apps and Must-Have Features

“Your health is now just an app away!”.

Healthcare is one of the most vital parts of everyone’s life that should also be prioritized for better and efficient solutions. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you can be the connecting link between doctors and patients by developing a healthcare application. This is a growing sector with a lot of opportunities and possibilities, so find the best mobile app development services in India that will help you figure out everything for your business venture.

In the initial stage of developing a healthcare app, you need to ask yourself 4 essential questions –

Question 1 – What will be the main purpose of your mobile healthcare app?
To fix the main purpose of your mHealth app is very essential for a prolific outcome. When you are clear about your goal, you can pave your own path. This will clear out what type of integration and iterations that you want to include in your app.

Question 2- What features, tools, technology and design flow do you want for your app?
The next question is essential to figure out the integration or module of your healthcare app like tools, designs, themes, feature and database tools needed for a seamless experience. This question sets out the scalability, accessibility, flexibility and personalization of your app.

Question 3 – What areas do you want to focus on to satisfy the needs of your end-users?
This is the key area where you need to decide on a proper framework of your app and programming of the source code according to the features you want to include. You can make a list with the app developer what features you want to enlist and how you can do so by keeping in mind the preferences of your end-users.

Question 4 – What user integration will your app focus on?
This question is essential because when you want to develop a mHealth app, the key is the orientation of the programming. Whether it will be a patient-oriented app or doctor-oriented app or HIS (Hospital Information System) that will have the comprehensive management of both patient and doctor feature systems.

These four questions will help you chalk out the framework of your healthcare app and depending on that you can select what type of healthcare you want to be in the spotlight for.

Some of the important kinds of mobile healthcare app can be distinguished as follows-

1. Workout Exercise and Training Apps
This type of healthcare application solely focuses on the workout and training sessions of its user regularly. This type of app initializes data given by the users like their initial goals and what type of training they want to do and based on that the app modifies and categorizes a chart and takes note of their progress.

2. Diet and Nutrition Apps
This type of app plans out a balanced diet for you as per the user needs and what the end-user wants to achieve like loose calories, athletic diet, muscle food and tracks your progress. This app provides tailored nutrition based balanced diets. It also includes food recipes, pointers on supplemental food, video suggestions and so on for a clearer view for the end-users.

3. Branded Gym and Fitness Club Apps
This kind of healthcare app is associated with branded fitness gyms and clubs that provide their expert opinion as per the needs of their clients. You usually need to subscribe for membership in the particular club and carry out your personal training sessions under experts. This is more of an interactive session. They have live and recorded videos for better understanding along with annual seminars and convocation for their members.

4. Health Awareness and Wellness Apps
This sort of app focuses on personal healthcare and creates awareness that can be useful in our daily food routine or chart. This kind of app also looks after the well-being of its end-users on a broader aspect with each type focusing on a particular task. This includes monitoring daily food diets as per your height, weight and other health factors.

This type of app can be subdivided into the following categories-

(I) Lifestyle Management Apps
This type of healthcare app manages the everyday lifestyle by tailoring everyday food, diet, medicines, meditation or yoga, running, steps taken, exercise, monitoring mealtime and so on as per your daily routine, age, gender, work and health issues. This is an everyday healthcare app.

(II) Women’s Health Management apps
This type of app solely focuses on women’s health and its related areas like menstruation, childbirth, maintaining personal hygiene and so on. This type of app helps in regulating women’s daily routine and emphasizing these focus areas and how to maintain good care by following their tailored routine.

(III) Disease Management Apps
This type of app focuses on monitoring disease control food diet along with tailored everyday routines for users that have a serious illness like diabetes, asthma, arthritis and other serious patients who need assistance every day. This type of mobile health app chalk out the dos and don’ts and help you take necessary precautions.

(IV) Medication Monitoring Apps
This type of app helps in monitoring minutely the medication of its users so that they have a regular well maintained flow of medicine intake at proper time intervals. This will set a reminder so that you can take your medication properly.

5. Comprehensive Healthcare Apps
This type of healthcare app monitors everything for both the patient and doctor including all the above-mentioned types compiled into one. This type of app has a vast integration and is more complex in development when compared to other apps as it includes multiple orientation, features and design altogether. This type of mobile healthcare app is an all-in-one package that will offer you everything as per your set instructions and data input.

When you know what type of mHealth app you need for your venture, then you can start including important features for your healthcare app development that will optimize the procedures and create a direct link between the doctor and the patient irrespective of any geographical hindrance.

Some of the essential features are stated below-

1. Basic Settings
When you are hiring a developer to build a healthcare app, you need to oversee what important settings you want as a feature in your app. Some of the basic settings would be building a doctor or patient profile, search bar option that can be easily located, audio and video options for having video conferencing calls during appointments, seamless user experience design and interface, designated function bar, modes of app stating the requirements, supporting multiple languages, payment gateways and security protocols for protecting personal data of both the doctor and the patient.

2. Personalization
This feature will help take inputs and store all the personal data of the users like height, weight, gender, medical history, medications, appointments, regular food diet charts, exercise sessions and bodily parameters. This takes notes of everything and presents to you tailored results. This helps to choose the right recommendations like doctor suggestions, medications and so is suggested for the end-user. In case, from the point of view of the doctor, this helps taking note of their specialist, clinics, timings of appointments, places of doctor’s visit, seminars and convocations. All this is managed through customizing your data for the best healthcare solution.

3. Reminding Daily Activities
This feature is very important for patients and doctors. Reminders will help out the patient to remember their medications, appointments, meals, pre-check reminders, booking sessions and so much more. This reminder will help you to complete each task on time. As well for the doctors, it will help to remember important meetings, visitations, check-ups, convocations, seminars and other things beforehand. This will also provide you with daily reports of your activities and maintain an organizer for your weekly and monthly activities.

4. Monitoring Body Health
This feature helps in monitoring body health regularly like body temperature, heart rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, systolic rhythms, calories burnt, steps taken, daily medications, food diet, weight, height and other parameters to keep the user as well as the doctor in-check. This keeps a regular flow and helps you to be on the same page. This is also beneficial to note down changes and be aware of any sudden medical needs, especially for diabetic and asthmatic patients.

5. Registration
This feature helps in registering the user itself and creating its own profile in the app so that the healthcare app can generate desired tailored results for the end-user. You can log in as a patient, doctor or as a hospital and fill up the necessary fields accordingly. This helps the app to track your medical needs and records and produce results accordingly beforehand. It is also useful during any doctor’s visitation as both the doctor and patient are aware of all the necessary information related to that.

6. Scheduling Appointments
While developing a healthcare mobile app. This feature helps in scheduling appointments for both doctors and patients as well as hospitals way before prior notice, regular check-ups with your doctor beforehand and maintaining a smooth timeline for hospitals, patients and doctors avoiding any overlapping of appointments. This feature is useful to organize your weekly or monthly schedules beforehand on your calendar so that everything is in proper order.

7. Goal Setting
This feature is useful to monitor your healthcare goals as per your need and keep you informed about your achievements. For example, if you want to lose 2 kilograms a month, you have scheduled and timed everything accordingly, while inputting all your body parameters and through this feature, you would know how much closer you are to achieving this pre-marked goal. This will keep the user on track with their daily routine and maintain a proper schedule. This is mainly included for athletes, sporty people, nutritionists, healthy diet people as it checks in on your habits and determines your position from your aim.

8. Tracking Progress and Metrics
Tracking your progress and body metrics is important to maintain a regular proper balanced diet and exercise to achieve your goals on time. This type of feature is essential to know whether you are on your track or have diverted from the trajectory path. This feature helps in counting or take notes of everything in numeric values like calories count, weight in kilograms and pounds, height in foot or centimetres, repetitions of exercises, sets, steps taken, running path in kilometres, cycling, skipping and so other variables but very data is taken in numeric form. After all this, it creates a trajectory for you in accordance with your goal and checks your progress and displays a daily report with it.

9. Notifications
The push notifications will remind you continuously of daily tasks, medication just like reminders but way better for all-around development and healthcare facilities. This will maintain a regular time interval of everything and will remind you if anything is not in place medical wise. This toolkit is a flash display of our daily routine and is an integral part of reminding every minute is important and does not let the users miss out on anything.

10. Maintaining Profiles
This feature helps in creating a user profile – that is you can sign in as a doctor, patient or hospital management and thus taking in all necessary details and personal information creates a profile for the end-user. This feature helps the user be bound to its interface and work accordingly with available features designed for each different interface and usage. Maintaining profiles segregates the work of the healthcare app and thus clear out the programming to run smoothly without mixing anyone working functionalities.

11. Post Check-up Necessities
This feature keeps in check with all the necessities after checkups like e-prescriptions, telemedicine, reports, online check-ups, progress report, seminars, self-help groups, convocations, scheduling next appointments and other diagnostic reports. This I well integrated for patients, doctors and hospitals too.

12. Payment Iterations
This feature helps in easy payment solutions like consultations, sessions, doctor’s visits and other hospital expenses and any other places for easy payments. This feature will also record the payment history and create transparency between two parties. Use multiple payment gateways and universal payment modes for a smooth transaction. This will help create a professional payment system for both patients and doctors in just a click.

13. Wearable Integration
This feature is an important aspect for any device on which the healthcare app will run. For example, the Fitbit watches is a wearable healthcare integration whereas there is a personal health monitor in most android devices that is non-wearable. Create a healthcare app that can be connected or is platform friendly like it can run on any device like smart watches, mobiles, desktops and other gadgets so that it will support the end-users every step of the way. This is very helpful for diabetic and asthmatic patients as they can monitor their body parameters at all times.

14. Health Support
This feature is essential for supporting its end users 24×7 with emergency contacts on speed dial, contacting ambulance services warning the user immediately when there is any sudden change in the body. This feature is an integral part of a mobile healthcare app as this support system is the last destination. This also helps in creating a dashboard for its users so that the patient and doctor are aware of their present medical circumstances and know it beforehand. This also helps in maintaining a record like a register. This also includes supporting video tutorials to provide emergency aids and attend to the patient like giving CPR, first-aid and other services before the arrival of the doctor in case of emergencies.

Get connected with the most reputed mobile app development company in India to ensure that all the essential features are added and you are able to assist the people in need.