New Healthcare Apps Designed to Help Keep Track of Children’s Medical Information

Posted by: Matthew Bick // August 27th, 2012

If you’re a parent, then you know that keeping track of everything in your child’s life can be a challenge.  However, a couple new apps have helped simplify keeping track of a child’s healthcare information.  As reported by Michael Sherman for Ragan’s Health Care Communication, there really is a great deal of information that needs to be kept track of throughout a child’s maturation.

According to Sherman’s article, “By the time a child becomes an adult, he or she will have seen about 18.7 different doctors, according to a Practice Fusion survey.”  Sherman continues, “the average medical record is 13 pages long, which means the average American has a health record of 200 pages in nearly 19 various locations.”  To help coordinate this enormous mass of information, MotherKnows and My Health Records were created.  These two apps have many useful health properties, including tracking medications, noting allergy flare-ups, and many other common occurrences.

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Writing Content for Mobile Devices

Posted by: Kirsten Taylor // May 29th, 2012

As we’ve mentioned in previous blogs, traffic on smartphones is supposed to increase 18 times by 2016. So, as a healthcare marketer, how do you prepare for your organization and learn to write content that will lend itself to small mobile screens? Ragan’s Health Care Communications News offers several suggestions:

  1. Write with a sense of immediacy. Typically someone on his or her mobile phone is killing time, and there are many apps they could be looking at. You must write with the understanding that there is competition, meaning the language needs to be clever, witty, relevant and concise.
  2. Lead with the lead. Give the most important information first. You don’t have a lot of time before the reader goes on to something else– write in a way that will immediately capture the reader’s attention.
  3. Use Twitter skills. If you can get your message across in 140 characters, then you can write for mobile devices.
  4. Make it readable. Mobile content is more difficult to comprehend – especially if it’s highly informational, which is often the case for health care content. Make the size, font and color something that is easily read on a small screen, and make the information understandable.

What else can you do to prepare for writing in a mobile landscape? Click here.

@KirstenETaylor

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Patient Care Evolution Continues in 2012

Posted by: Matthew Bick // April 16th, 2012

Technology continues to revolutionize patient care and the healthcare industry in general.  However, this latest innovation could be revolutionary.  A company in Redwood City, California, will have a small, ingestible sensor for sale starting this fall in the United Kingdom.  The pill-swallowed sensor transmits a massive amount of medical information to individual users and their doctors.

According to the Star Tribune’s Steve Johnson, Proteus Biomedical’s device will allow doctors and medical professionals to monitor a patient’s status in nearly real-time from their own offices.  A patient could simply take the pill and forget about it while doctors could monitor vital signs and other pertinent indicators.  One of the downsides of this massive amount of new information may in fact be the sheer volume of that data.  Calling it a potential “information tsunami,” Johnson indicates that there are concerns about adding to an already large amount of electronically-produced information.  There are also, of course, security concerns from hackers and identity thieves.

However, the potential upside from so much critical information made readily available is difficult to deny.  As Johnson writes, the increase in information is seen by many as, “inevitable and, ultimately, beneficial.”

@MatthewBick

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mHealth Market Set to Grow Through 2015

Posted by: Adrenaline // January 11th, 2012

Healthcare’s ever-increasing investment in mobile marketing is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.  According to a new article by Bernie Monagain for HealthcareIT News, “the mobile health app market continues to see substantial growth, and is expected to continue expansion as business models and significant value offerings continue to evolve.”

Indeed, many healthcare providers and institutions are already making significant investments in mobile and interactive concepts.  In fact, the University of Chicago is already utilizing iPad apps to help its physicians and other staff members make caring for patients easier.  Their iPad app helps doctors access critical patient information on-the-go in the hospital.

As we move closer to 2015, Monagain also indicates that we may see a growth in excess of $100 million in the healthcare app industry.

@MatthewBick

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Seattle-Based Health System Allow Patients to E-Mail Physicians Via Mobile App

Posted by: Neil James // September 21st, 2011

More than one-quarter of mobile apps are used once and then never again. Offering legitimate value to those you hope will download is essential to ensure that your hospital’s mobile creation isn’t one of the four banished to the island of forgotten apps.

Need a good example of how to offer value? Ann Tracy Mueller discusses a new iPhone app created by Group Health Cooperative that helps patients create a deeper relationship with their physicians. Group Health’s app allows patients to personally e-mail their physicians, schedule appointments via their phone and check wait times at the nearby pharmacy!

@NeilAndrewJames

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Don’t Build a Mobile App for Your Hospital Without Answering These Two Questions

Posted by: Neil James // September 19th, 2011

It is true what they say – there’s an app for that. There is an app that allows you to simulate playing a harmonica. There is an app that allows you to count and calculate via a virtual abacus. But just because there is an app for that doesn’t mean there should be. How can you tell, as a hospital marketer, whether a mobile app will deliver real value to your patients, or simply end up in the recycle bin after one use.

John Luginbill discusses this topic in a new article for Ragan’s Healthcare News, Does Your Hospital Need an App? Whether yours does, according to Luginbill, boils down to two simple questions: does your target market use smartphones, and what do you want your app to accomplish that your existing digital assets (such as your website) doesn’t already?

@NeilAndrewJames

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Half of Mothers Have Downloaded Health- and Fitness-Related Mobile Apps

Posted by: Neil James // August 24th, 2011

Mom is often the one who makes the healthcare decisions, and if momma ain’t happy with the local hospital, ain’t nobody happy with the local hospital.

So what does this influential household member rely on to make decisions about her and her family’s health? New research, as discussed in a new article for eMarketer, shows that technology, particularly the smartphone, is playing an increasingly important role in how mom gets health information.

According to this new research (conducted by Mom Central Consulting), 48 percent of mothers who are smartphone users have downloaded a health- and fitness-related mobile app.

How else are moms employing digital technology to meet their healthcare needs? According to eMarketer, a new BabyCenter study found that moms index higher than the general population in most categories when it comes to smartphone activities, including health-specific smartphone activities. Furthermore, BabyCenter found that 90 percent of moms who own smartphones use them to research health conditions!

@NeilAndrewJames

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Four Components of a Strong Mobile Healthcare Strategy

Posted by: Neil James // April 14th, 2011

Four Components of a Strong Mobile Healthcare Strategy

It’s time to get out in front of your competitors a launch your clinic into the mobile space. So where do you start? Text message campaign? Branded mobile app? Mobile website? There are so many options, and you can’t afford all of them. Thibaud Guymard offers four recommendations that healthcare marketers can use to develop a strong mobile marketing strategy in his article for Creation Healthcare, 4 tips for Mobile Healthcare Engagement. Not surprisingly, many of Guymard’s recommendations are customer-centric, urging marketers to learn where, when and how customers are using their mobile devices. Guymard also implores marketers to measure their results and adopt a long-term approach, changing and optimizing their strategy as necessary.

@NeilAndrewJames

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Physicians to Recommend Mobile App Health Monitoring in Tandem With Treatment

Posted by: Meghan Blackford // March 8th, 2011

Physicians to Recommend Mobile App Health Monitoring in Tandem With Treatment

Mobile applications have revolutionized the way Americans access information. Whether it’s your calorie counter or your transit app telling you if your bus is running behind – mobile apps provide up-to-the-minute content to subscribers at an affordable price.

The last few years have seen mobile apps grow in popularity, and according to Janice Simmons in her article for FierceMobileHealthcare,  Traditional Healthcare Channels Expected to Take Over Apps Distribution, physicians in coming years will be encouraging their patients to download mobile apps to monitor their health. By “prescribing or suggesting applications for their patients as components of treatment,” doctor’s critical eye and careful scrutinizing could be helpful for consumers who find it difficult to navigate the mobile health app marketplace.

@MJBlackford

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Why Hospitals’ Mobile Marketing Plans Should Target Boomers

Posted by: Neil James // February 11th, 2011

If you subscribe to stereotypes, you might think that boomers view mobile devices (cell phones and tablet devices) as only slightly less complicated than brain surgery and rocket science. But as is often the case when you subscribe to stereotypes, however, you’d be wrong. According to a new report from the MIT Enterprise Northwest Forum, as chronicled by Dan Bowman in his article for FierceMobileHealthcare, Boomers Will Shape M-Health Technology Efforts, over half of all boomers (those ages 46-64) indicate high willingness to use in-home health monitoring devices in tandem with the care of their primary physician. The MIT report believes that boomers will not only continue, but help to shape trends in mobile healthcare, citing the 200 million smartphone healthcare apps in circulation and the FCC’s National Broadband Plan to expand high-speed Internet services as major contributing factors.

@NeilAndrewJames

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