Hospitals and health systems that offer branded mobile apps for their patients and the communities they serve are on the rise. The number of healthcare apps in the app stores has increased significantly in the past couple of years. This post provides an overview of key elements that make branded hospital apps successful with patients and communities.
Know your App Users
Today hospitals and health systems serve communities with diverse healthcare needs and patient demographics. Understanding demographics of patients, users of the app and how they will engage with the app is a key element to make the app successful. Asking questions such as, “Will the app be used by all patients?”, “Will the app be used by patients with certain healthcare needs?”, will enable to focus on type of capabilities to be included in the app or excluded from the app.
Content Relevancy
Since screen space is very limited in mobile devices, feature only content that is relevant, timely and useful. Some of the hospital apps tend to duplicate or include content available in the website, which makes it difficult to find and navigate through the information available in the app. Select and highlight only content that patients and users can act upon when they are consuming the information from their mobile devices.
User Engagement
User engagement is another key factor for ongoing usage and adoption of the app. Mobile apps provide great opportunity to engage and connect with patients and users of the app. Push notifications offer the ability to send timely and relevant messages. Location based services provide the ability to connect with users at the right place at the right time. Plan and deliver notifications, alerts and messages that would increase patient engagement through the app.
Ease of Use
General tendency is to include as many capabilities or options in the app. But, users expect simplicity, ease of use and easy to learn. So, focus on simplicity and ease of use.
Metrics
Finally, include metrics in the app, learn from usage and re-iterate. Incorporate findings in future releases of the app.
Knowing your app users and including the right set of mobile enabled capabilities with a focus on simplicity and ease of use will make your hospital app successful, engaging and also increase adoption.
By Kingsley Daniel | October 11, 2016
SHSMD Digital Engagement Taskforce Member
Principal
hCadence
kingsley@hCadence.com