The healthcare sphere has been transformed because of the emergence of medical apps and tech-driven platforms to provide patients with quality care at low costs. Telemedicine apps are one of the most significant clinical inventions which have made easy for medical practitioners to provide care services with much more convenience even to the patients residing in remote locations where immediate medical aid is still a fictional concept.
Healthcare organizations, doctors and clinical practices are embracing telemedicine apps in order to make the experience more interactive and fulfilling for the patients. But creating such apps is tricky. Want to know why?
Telemedicine apps deal with confidential health-related data (PHI) of the patients which makes it mandatory for custom medical software developer and app owners to integrate the best practices for providing data privacy and security provisions to keep the sensitive medical information intact.
Basically, telemedicine products have to be in compliance with HIPAA standards to ensure that the confidential PHI which they are gathering and storing will not get compromised or misused in any manner. Experienced clinical app developers can easily build intuitive telemedicine mobile solutions which are efficient as well as HIPAA-friendly.
Do you have any plan of designing such an app? If yes, please explore the article to find out any and everything you need to know about telemedicine apps. But prior to exploring the details let’s begin with the basics.
What Are Telemedicine Apps? Also, Why Do We Need Them?
It’s true that the healthcare industry has become advanced and tech-savvy but still, people residing in remote locations need to face a plethora of hurdles to get immediate medical aid. Also, the care facilities in such areas are either partially equipped or at the verge of shutting down due to negligence.
In addition to the clinical crises in the rural areas, the majority of hospital visits for follow-up checkups or prescriptions renewals are basic and can be handled easily through a call. These reasons have made medical stakeholders and developers think of building mobility solutions to help doctors in examining and treating patients via video calls by breaking all the location barriers. And, this is how telemedicine apps were born.
Telemedicine allows physicians to connect with patients in remote locations easily and help them in avoiding the possible inconveniences of a hospital visit. Also, these apps help doctors in creating a better schedule for examining more patients, save patients’ time and provide them with better access to care facilities at affordable costs.
What Are The Key Benefits Of Telemedicine Apps? And, How These Apps Help Medical Practitioners To Step Their Game Up & Provide Patients With Seamless Care Services?
As we have seen, telemedicine apps allow medical professionals to offer quality care services as well as practical guidance to remote patients by leveraging telecommunication technology which is a good cause.
But have you ever thought that remote consultations can boost patient services and be the primary driving force to overcome clinical crises? No, right? Let’s look at five crucial ways in which telemedicine apps are helping patients to create a new avenue for connecting and collaborating with experienced doctors and take charge of their health.
Seamless Access To Specialists Who Can Promptly Examine Patients At Home
It’s extremely difficult for the family members of patients who are unable to walk to make frequent hospital visits. But telemedicine apps have made it easy to track the vital signs of the patients at home such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, etc. Once the data is captured and stored in the app it can be sent to the concerned physician for examining and prescribing treatment accordingly.
Such patients can also connect with some of the best doctors in their area via these apps over video calls. Doctor On Demand is one such telemedicine apps that allow patients to interact with doctors in case of an emergency situation. The patients can use this app to enter their symptoms, allergies, or any other medication which they are currently taking.
Especially, patients suffering from skin diseases, bruises and eye infections can send images of the affected areas and get instant medical aid. With the help of such real-time and photo-based physicians can message the treatment plan to the patients to give them instant relief.
Helps In Minimizing Healthcare Costs For Financially Weak Patients
The remote patients can easily interact with specialized nurses they would not otherwise be able to afford via telemedicine apps. Also, they can get appropriate treatment prior to their disease becoming incurable.
In addition to accessibility to medical experts, telemedicine apps also help people in saving their time and energy in visiting hospitals often for getting their prescriptions renewed or follow-up checkups.
Patients can schedule an e-visit and discuss their current symptoms with the doctor. The physician will examine the symptoms and can make modifications in the prescription accordingly. Also, they can and recommend appropriate medicines or tests. Patients can either print it out or show the electronic version in the drug store to purchase the prescribed medicines.
It saves time and money for those patients which they would have spent on commuting and getting admitted. Also, it eases out the hectic schedule of the doctors as now they don’t have to treat and monitor several serious patients at the same time in the hospital wards.
Provide Patients With Quality Care Services and Valuable Second Opinion On Recommended Treatment Plans
Because of lack of medical amenities hospitals in many areas aren’t capable to cater to different clinical needs of the patients. Also, such patients couldn’t get access to skilled medical practitioners because these clinical settings can’t afford them.
But telemedicine apps have made this possible for these patients to interact and take expert medical advice from specialized doctors which in turn increases the quality of care. Pingmd is a telemedicine app which helps patients to convey their symptoms to the concerned physician.
For instance, a patient has taken medication for high fever, but after having the medicine he is experiencing severe stomach ache. He might think if this ache is a side effect of the medication which he took. In such a case with the help of this app, he can ping his doctor about the stomach ache and can get the right advice.
Mobile technology is amazing. With the available technologies, anyone can see a doctor using smartphones. The impact of app developers and mobile app developers is increasing in healthcare. They make this possible by developing and releasing telemedicine and telehealth apps.
These apps make the provision and accessing of health more convenient. They make healthcare more preventive, inexpensive and better. These mobile apps for healthcare are unique. They are creating a viable marketplace for healthcare services. These apps reduce time to access medical consultation and treatment.
These mobile apps are revolutionizing healthcare on a daily basis. They allow patients to seek health on virtual platforms. They assist doctors and patients in solving health issues. These apps help healthcare providers to gather and manage information. They serve reference materials for care providers. They assist in monitoring and managing of patients. These apps are available across the U.S. and overseas to travelling U.S. residents. It is a must for mobile apps offering diagnosis and treatment become HIPAA-compliant. Telehealth information is available in the National Conference of State Legislatures. It contains information for each State within the U.S.
There are thousands of these apps available. Top app development companies work on daily basis to meet demands. This is an area where virtual reality app development is increasing without bounds. Highlight of some of the telemedicine and telehealth apps is available on this post.
PingMD
PingMD is a mobile app that provides a platform for doctors and patients to chat. It is available for Apple and Android smartphone users. This app enables doctors to discuss medical issues with their patients and colleagues. It eliminates the issue of leaking private messages to the public. The discussion between patients and doctors is transferrable to the patients’ medical record. Doctors can bill their patients for e-visitations and e-consultations. With this app, consulting a doctor becomes easy and fast.
HelloMD
HelloMD is an app where doctors set their consultation fees. This app helps to find specialists for appointment booking. It is not an app that provides access to immediate healthcare. This app will help find specialists like neurologists and radiologists. This app is for patients with very special health conditions. Appointments are set up within 24 hours once a specialist in located. Thereafter, consultation between the specialist and patient takes place through video call. The app aims to connect patients with the right doctor. It helps patients seek second opinion on health conditions. Face to face consultation can happen where necessary. Doctors fix their fee and patients pay through credit card. This is before fixing an appointment. This app is web-based and accessible via mobile devices.
Epocrates
Epocrates is an app available for download to users of Android and Apple mobile devices. This app is a powerful app that allows doctors to access the health evidence of patients. It allows doctors access specific guidelines from national specialty societies about patients. It is an app with loads of source information on medications and prescriptions. It is an app for finding doctors to consult. This app provides information on harmful interactions between drugs. It can help identify pills using imprint code and some physical properties. It helps in calculating BMI and GFR. This app provides a platform for accessing medical news and information on researches. This app has two versions, the free and the fee for subscription version. The free version is Epocrates RX and the other is Epocrates Essentials. The Epocrates Essentials costs about $159.99 at the time of writing.
LiveHealth Online
LiveHealth Online is an available to Android and Apple mobile device users. This app allows patients to consult doctors through video calls. These doctors write prescriptions for their patient at the end of consultation. Note that this is possible in only few states. Patients make payment using their insurance plan. Consultation fee is $49/consultation for patients with no insurance coverage. Patients pay the consultation fee if their policy does not cover online visits.
Medscape
Medscape is an app accessible by Android and Apple mobile device users. It offers healthcare professionals the access to millions of medical information. It is a platform where medical profession can access educational tools. For clinicians in the U.S., it is the number one medial platform. It has more than 4 million users. It helps caregivers to look up medications and their dosages. It has a drug interaction check for preventing adverse combination of drugs. Its evidence-based disease and condition reference assists in finding important information on patients. There are medical calculators and image collection platforms on this app. This is a free app but requires that users to set up an account. It is available to users of Kindle Fire.
Microsoft HealthVault
Microsoft HealthVault is a free health mobile app. It is available to Apple and Window mobile device users. This app is a platform where individuals can keep their medical records. It is safe and up-to-date in storing medical record. It eases sharing of personal medical records to health professionals and family. People with chronic condition use this app to trail their health metrics. It is possible to input manual data. For automatic data input, patients connect the app to health trackers. Accessing this app through the web is possible.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
Pingmd, Inc. is a cloud based secure communication platform that provides messaging, voice and video for virtual care. Integration with the EHR and care management protocols for higher population health based patient engagement.
About Statement
Pingmd is a mobile communications healthcare solutions company with an app-based service designed to reset and restore personal relationships in healthcare. The service is transforming the efficiency and productivity of healthcare delivery with structured dialogue between patients and doctors, and doctors and their colleagues. Using a simple and secure app which captures photographs, videos and text-based conversations, the new models of virtual care become seamless in the busy practice.
Founder’s Story
Pingmd was founded by neurosurgeon and current CEO, Dr.Gopal Chopra and his wife, Dr. Manju Chopra. Dr. Manju Chopra, an experienced pediatrician was frustrated that she spent more time on administrative tasks than with her patients. They formed the company to redesign the healthcare experience for the clinician and promote better continuity of care for the patient with a simple and secure point of care communication system. They continue to innovate the way think of care delivery and care coordination.
Pingmd, Inc. is a cloud based secure communication platform that provides messaging, voice and video for virtual care. Integration with the EHR and care management protocols for higher population health based patient engagement.