They allow scanning patients’ electronic health records and barcodes of medications with the help of a built-in camera on a smartphone, which saves the clinic’s money since there’s no necessity to spend funds on buying special scanning devices. An example of such a service is the Epic Rover app. Apart from scanning barcodes of medications Epic Rover also has the following features:
- Messenger to communicate with patients and other health workers.
- Visualization of information about a patient and his progress in the form of diagrams.
- Integration with electronic health records Epic.
Apps for communication with patients
They increase patients’ engagement in the process of treatment and their loyalty to a healthcare provider, guarantee greater transparency between doctors and patients. A spectacular example is the EASE app, which offers its users the following possibilities:
- Sending previously prepared messages to patients and their families.
- Inviting the patient’s family to the app network, which allows keeping them informed of the patient’s current condition and his treatment.
- Showing HIPAA-compliant messages, pictures, and videos that disappear 60 seconds after being viewed.
Apps for medication dosing
Doctors use them to calculate individual medication doses based on the current condition, age, weight, and other personal details whereby avoiding laborious hand calculations, electronic spreadsheets, and complex tools. It’s exactly what the DoseMeRx app does. Aside from calculations of medication doses, it has a range of other useful features:
- Integration with electronic health records, where a doctor can leave notes about a patient’s condition, disease history, medication, and dose.
- Reminders for patients not to forget about the medication intake, which the doctors set (name and dose of medication).
- Dose optimization. Bayesian dosing methods clinically validated pharmacokinetic drug models, patient characteristics, drug concentrations, and genotype to guide dose optimization.
- Predicting treatment response.
Apps for medical records
They simplify the keeping of records about the patients. They collect data on arterial pressure, doctor’s visits, examinations, prescriptions, and other information that makes it possible to monitor the progress of a patient’s treatment. Medical Records is a good example of a similar app, which alongside the listed above possibilities has other features such as:
- Scheduling a certain doctor’s appointment.
- Recording video of procedures instead of text messages.
- Search for patients by ID.
Apps for risk assessment
They monitor the patients’ medical condition in real-time through the integration with EHR and various health monitoring devices, which the users carry on themselves. A good example is an FHR 5-Tier app, which is intended for obstetricians, midwives, and nurses who use electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) for laboring patients. Here are its features:
- Real-time fetal heart rate (FHR) interpretation to help make a decision on further treatment.
- Automatic notification of doctors if monitoring devices have identified threats to the patient’s health (mother’s and/or fetus’s).
Healthcare apps for patients
Apps for doctors upon the request or telehealth
They will help a patient to find a medical specialist, make an appointment, see him with the help of a video call, and pay for the consultation via an integrated payment gateway. One of the typical mobile apps for doctors upon the request is Evisit, which has other features as well:
- Embedded messaging system, EHR, search for medications, and prescriptions.
- A virtual waiting room, two-way video communication.
Apps for diets and nutrition
A standard set of the app for diets includes nutritional (diet) pieces of advice, an extensive library with recipes and dish descriptions, a calorie counter, a diary, and a graph of the progress. Snap It has it all and other features too:
- Planning the user’s nutrition and monitoring the consumption of macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and a total amount of calories.
- Barcode scanner to get information about nutrients contained in food products in shops.
- Registration of images of food on the app.
Apps based on conditions
They help users, who suffer from epilepsy, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, allergy, and even depression, to monitor their nutrition and medication intake, and predict their health condition. This category includes the Seizure Tracker app, which was created by the Munroe-Meyer Institute. It has the following features:
- Manual data input so that the user is able to specify the type of seizures, time of day, duration, and other related information.
- Video recording on a smartphone to make it possible for users to describe their seizures, their triggers, and explain what has happened after them to a doctor (or family).
- Possibility to synchronize the user account to the YouTube channel to record the information about the seizures and share it with relatives.
Apps for meditation
They also belong to a mobile healthcare market since they’re helping users maintain their mental wellbeing. These apps usually have a library with previously recorded guided meditation sessions, a timer, gamification, and useful tips on breathing techniques. The most famous example is the Calm app. Here are its main features:
- Library of guided meditations for various purposes (relationship, giving up bad habits, happiness and piece achievement, etc.).
- Library with podcasts, stories about sleeping, relaxing music, breathing programs, and masterclasses.
- Graphs, timers, progress history.
Fitness apps
