Why Do You Need a Telehealth App?

What is a telehealth app? Why do you need one? Can’t a patient and a doctor discuss their issues over the phone?

You’ll be surprised to learn that a telehealth app is much more than a mere phone chat solution, and if built smartly, it can become a great revenue driver for your healthcare business.

This article is for healthcare providers and other businesses considering investing in healthcare apps. Here we explain what a healthcare app is and how a telehealth app development company can help clinics and hospitals increase patient satisfaction, improve healthcare quality, and save lives in situations where immediate help can’t be provided.

Interested? Let’s get started!

What is a telehealth app?

A telehealth app is a mobile software solution that facilitates remote healthcare by enabling information exchange and management. This exchange takes the form of video and audio calls, chats, reporting, dashboards, and signals received from wearables.

Right, it is much more than a calling app; it is a whole healthcare solution, deeply integrated into the patient’s electronic health records system, powered with data about patients’ health, easy access to medical history, prescriptions, and tests, and even an alert system for chronic diseases when also united with wearable sensors.

What makes a telehealth app an excellent solution for boosting your healthcare business is its features, which we shall discuss further.

What are the features of a telehealth app?

At the outset, it is essential to make clear that a telehealth, also called a wellness app, is a two-sided solution that must serve both patients and healthcare providers.

So, on the patient side, it should feature:

Patient portal: This is the feature that makes a telehealth app so loved by patients. It stores personal information, health records, history, test results, scheduled appointments, notes, and more.

Scheduling: the scheduling feature allows you to view the appointment calendar, remind patients about upcoming appointments via push notifications, let them reschedule or cancel appointments, and leave notes that may be relevant for the next doctor’s meeting.

Video conferencing: a high-quality video conferencing feature with an integrated chat and a recording option will help a patient receive adequate advice, replay the meeting video, and make notes, as well as make notes during the calls and exchange documents, like medical imaging, test results taken at other service providers, or other relevant documents.

Remote patient monitoring: the science of smart sensors skyrockets, enabling sensors to measure heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, temperature, some chemical indicators in the skin, and more. When integrated into the healthcare app, these data enable continuous monitoring of a patient’s health status and serve as an invaluable source of diagnostic information.

Online payment: the ability to pay for medical help online is also an essential feature of an application like this, as it gives an extra layer of convenience.

On the provider side, such an app features:

A doctor’s portal, allowing scheduling, prescriptions, patient meeting notes, and complete information on the patients who receive their help.

HER/EMR integration, which stands for the accuracy of data. It is also essential that these records be accessible through different care settings to reduce administrative errors and streamline operations.

ePrescribing and referrals: a doctor should be able to issue, remove, and edit electronic prescriptions, and view the history and status of prescriptions.

Patient education portal: It is excellent if a doctor can provide educational materials for patients, which can promote self-care and improve patients’ awareness of their condition (associated diets, training, rehab facilities, etc.).

When do you need a telehealth app?

There are various situations when a person needs a telehealth app, including the following:

• When a person gets into a remote area with no access to healthcare, but needs the help of a specialist out of the blue.
• When a person with a chronic disease must travel and therefore cannot attend a routine checkup.
• When you need to discuss the results of the routine tests and correct medical prescriptions.
• When a person has a contagious disease and needs sick leave or new prescriptions, but traveling to a healthcare facility may put others at risk of contamination.
• When a person needs a consultation with a doctor with a narrow specialty, but visiting this doctor physically requires long-distance travel.
• When a patient wants all their medical history and test data consolidated in one place.
• When a person needs to cancel or reschedule their appointment with a doctor

Summing up

Building a telehealth app is a good investment that will improve the patient experience and, in turn, make your facility their favorite point of care. That is why having a good telehealth app will boost your revenue and build up your brand reputation.