The role of healthcare mobile applications in 2020. How mobile technology can take care of our health

In today’s world, where digital technology is developing rapidly, it would be surprising if these innovations didn’t affect the health industry. Among the main trends in this direction is mobile health – mHealth. With healthcare mobile applications’ help, doctors and pharmacists can provide patients with safer and more effective care. In contrast, patients are able to control their own treatment and increase responsiveness to therapy. 

This goal is primarily since many low- and middle-income countries face challenges in providing timely and effective health care. Based on technological features, mHealth applications are one of the options to face such challenges.

Currently, there is a huge number of options for mobile software, which allows you to continuously store and track the dynamics of various indicators of the person’s physical condition. This applies to weight, blood pressure level, blood glucose, etc.. Also, healthcare mobile apps help observe the diet and take medicines, to monitor the menstrual cycle. Programs are available to focus on specific groups of patients, depending on their disease (from gout to cancer). The smartphone can also become a personal trainer who intelligently distributes the load and smooth transitions with the user.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a real revolution in health care, which left its mark on the 2020 trends list.

Related: Why Mobile Apps are Gaining Importance in Healthcare Industry

Benefits of mHealth

As humanity becomes more and more immersed in the field of digital technology, new mobile healthcare applications are emerging that allow people to control their own health and treatment, and make daily choices towards a healthy lifestyle.

New mHealth technologies can not only increase patients’ adherence to treatment but also improve the work of pharmacists – to make it more automated and efficient.

The market for mobile healthcare applications includes many categories, but its growth does not stop there. The range of functionality of such healthcare applications may vary.

The main types of MHealth for users (not medics)

• Fitness apps and weight loss training – such apps are quite capable of replacing a personal trainer. There you could find many online training: yoga, boxing, strength training, exercises for individual muscle groups.
• Dieting and nutrition apps – for those who want to eat right and dream of losing weight. It is like a diary, where you write down what you ate. The app shows the caloric content, nutritional value of different types of food and gives advice.
• Healthy lifestyle – applications will prompt you when you need to drink water, monitor your diet, help not eat sugar, and even calm in stressful situations.
• Sleep cycle analysis – such apps will not only calculate the best time for your sleep, but will also monitor its phases throughout the night, and in the morning, will wake you up at the most favorable moment.
• Women’s health apps – such applications are designed specifically for women who want to track their menstrual cycle.
• Monitoring apps for pregnant – personal diary for records, the ability to track medical information, calendar of child development. There is also an information section with useful tips during pregnancy, news with articles, and videos.
• Medical consultations and patient communities – apps with the ability to communicate directly with pharmacists or doctors by asking questions or using a live chat feature.
• Clinical and diagnostic applications – library of symptoms, diseases, medicines, and doctors.
• Mental health apps – some applications help control mood changes, others teach effective meditation, and others motivate and support all endeavors, meditations, meditation instructions etc.
• Medical education apps.
• Reminder apps – reminders about taking the pills.
• Patient history data – such applications allow patients to keep a personal log of symptoms of certain diseases so that doctors and pharmacists can help assess pathology control or drug adherence.

The main types of MHealth for pharmacists and doctors

• Mobile healthcare applications that provide pharmacists with quick access to a variety of reliable reference literature have been designed to improve the quality of pharmaceutical care as well as to facilitate continuous professional development.
• Product information. Today, many clinical guidelines and drug databases are presented in paper format and in electronic form, which is available on stationary computers. However, healthcare applications make access to the information necessary for pharmacists even faster and more automated.
• Healthcare application functionality usually includes searching for indications of drugs, their dosages, contraindications, possible interactions, adverse reactions, etc.
• Education and professional development. Healthcare mobile apps can be a tool for pharmacists to keep track of new professional information, including the results of various clinical trials, new approaches to treatment, and much more.
• Diagnostic Tools. Nowadays, in combination with mobile devices, can operate diagnostic devices that measure respiratory function. First of all, these tools are designed to improve the monitoring of patients who are undergoing long-term treatment for chronic diseases (such as diabetes mellitus).

“An important factor that must be mentioned about mHealth is the safety of the connection. The confidentiality of information may be compromised as it is transmitted between the patient and the healthcare provider through healthcare mobile apps. Therefore, mHealth devices and mobile healthcare applications must be designed and tested with security in mind,” says Oleh Sadykow, a co-founder of DeviQA – leading automation testing company.

Conclusion

The medical community is called upon to safeguard the public’s health, and modern remote technologies can help. mHealth allows optimizing doctor-patient interaction, remotely monitoring a patient’s vital signs, organizing the stages of medical examinations, dynamic monitoring of people with chronic diseases, and providing timely advice, including those in difficult working, civil or military service conditions. These technologies make it possible to go beyond the usual geographical range of a medical facility, to win patient loyalty by providing medical care and meeting the patient’s need for constant medical attention.