The rapid development of mobile technologies in recent years could not but influenced the healthcare and medical sector. With COVID-19 outbreak we could witness a real revolution in this sphere since the world governments were taking all possible actions to remove any barriers to telehealth.In order to protect life and health, the world’s population required effective measures, tools, and solutions to deliver medical services under the conditions of humans’ self-isolation. A telemedicine app for doctors became a perfect solution for many practitioners and medical centers, allowing prompt, flexible, and distant help to the patients wherever they are.Being involved in the new experience, we are going to look into the matter in more detail and find out the key features, steps, and elements to make doctor app UI design and overall UX perfect.Reasons to Develop a Doctor Booking App for Your Medical CenterLet’s first deal with the major reasons for medical centers and hospital app development.Automation of the routine processes of appointment scheduling is obviously a win-win solution for both doctors and patients.The increasing number of people nowadays use their smartphones for communication and planning their activities and schedules. Therefore, the digitizing of healthcare services comes in handy allowing the patients not only to book a doctor’s appointment online anytime and from anywhere, but also receive a consultation through video conferencing in real-time and the necessary prescriptions afterward.The benefits of telemedicine apps for doctors and medical centers are the following:
Saving time
Through the automated system of appointments scheduling a doctor is excluded from this unnecessary process and only deals with the patients’ visits and their treatment. He just receives reminders of the upcoming appointments and notifications about the slots booked or canceled. Besides, the possibilities of telemedicine allow holding distant consultations, saving time for both patients and doctors.
Improved patient care
Through the development of apps for doctor appointments, medical centers can free some administrative staff for more important tasks as well as reduce manual work and human error factor. Besides, the canceled slots can be quickly filled in with the patients who require urgent visits.
Cut costs
When the appointment scheduling becomes automated, less administrative staff is required, and consequently expenses decrease. A hospital can then make the cost of services for the patients more affordable. With the online scheduling software, better consultations' management is possible: canceled visits can also be quickly filled in with urgent patients, it means that less doctor’s effective time is lost. It is cost-effective since the no-show rates go down tremendously.
Easy specialist search
As a rule, an iOS or Android app for doctor appointments is combined with doctors’ profiles listing, so when a patient faces some specific problem, he can filter, search and choose a specialist with particular expertise.
Expanded practices
Mobile apps integrated with telemedicine platforms allow extended medical experience for doctors, not only allowing more offline patients but also providing the opportunity to consult online.
More accessible healthcare
Medical video conferencing allows more benefits for the patients with limited health capacities, even immobile individuals can, for instance, have a consultation with their doctor remotely at any convenient time.
Online payments integration
Payment systems integration right into the app means more convenience for the clients and higher ROI for hospitals and medical entities.
Improved efficiency
Getting regular insights into medical center performance allows its profound analysis, bottlenecks identification, and efficiency enhancement through optimization, better productivity, and processes streamlining.
Creating a Doctor Visit App: One Step at a Time
There are certain aspects to keep in mind during doctor recording app development. We are going to look into them below. Just keep on reading.Relieve a specific pain of your target users. Trying to create an app with a wide range of services, the developers often fail to provide each service at a proper level. Tech consulting firm’s Accenture research has revealed that only about 11% of medical applications offer their users the features they need and want.Our advice is to focus on a doctor appointment booking app functionality with the possibility of additional integrations for extended services.Here we will deal with general points, however, Axisbits experts are always ready to provide a detailed consultation on specific projects on request.Make usability and perfect User Experience your priority. Life is going on on the go now, so the modern users value intuitive user-friendly interfaces. Both doctors and patients should be able to register in the app quickly, with no hassle and minimum details to enter: just personal information, contact details, insurance, etc.Healthcare is the sphere where privacy matters, so ensure your solution meets the highest standards of security and privacy according to the local requirements.
Basic features to consider for your doctor booking app:
Registration and profile
Users prefer simple registration, but medicine is the sphere where everyone should create his or her account in person filling in the necessary details. On part of the doctors, the proof of their medical degree, specialty, location and experience details are required. Feedback and ratings from registered users are desirable to make your app more trustworthy and attractive for the patients, who like real reviews.
Search
When developing a doctor visit app, take care that the search is convenient and interactive. The users should be able to filter and sort the results according to location, specialty, price, availability, and other parameters, which may help them find the very specialists they need at a certain moment. Besides, the profiles of doctors should be easily previewed and checked for competence and reviews.
Scheduling
A doctor booking app should allow both online and offline booking options with a fully functioning interactive calendar, push notification, and/or phone or app reminders. With intuitive design in mind, make reservations possible to start with just a tap and a flawless realization after that.
Make the process simple: the selection of a doctor—appointment request - additional information provision (symptoms, for instance) and appointment setting after the doctor’s confirmation.
A doctor profile
As soon as the patient has chosen the date, he or she should proceed to the specialists available. So, doctors’ profiles should be available right in the app. Take care that the doctor module is available for creation and revision for the purpose. The necessary details should include the specialist’s bio and photo, specialty, location, patients’ reviews, and price per visit/service.
Payment options
For your patients more convenience, provide them with the opportunity to pay the due fees or deposits right in the app. Not to lose users at this point you should consider integrations with the most popular payment systems and make the payment process easy, fast, and secure.
Communication module
Consider chat or messenger module for simple and quick doctor-patient communication in order to specify details, ask questions, discuss additional issues, and alike.
Additional functionality to consider
Besides the major features mentioned above, you can improve your telemedicine app for doctors with the 3 more quite handy features:
Video Conferencing
Integration with the tools for video conferences, like Zoom, Skype, or alike will relieve many patients, who want to consult with a doctor, but don’t have the need to pay a personal visit, of the necessity to physically go to the medical center or hospital. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is especially valuable to avoid being diseased coming into contact with the other patient.
ePrescriptions feature
A patient should be able to get an e-prescription from the doctor right away, which the specified list of medicines, dosages, and time to take. Then a user will simply order the necessary medications from their local pharmacy without any necessity to go anywhere.
Navigation and geolocation
Every smartphone has Google Maps, but the interaction of such a feature right into the application will help a user find the closest doctor, a nearby walk-in clinic, or an emergency room.
So take care that your android or iPhone medical apps for doctors’ appointments can guide a patient to the place of visit without any trouble. It provides the users with the advantage of not switching between the applications, but locate the necessary medical entity at a single place.
Conclusion
We have touched upon the key features of a hospital app development, and some of those, which will enhance your users’ experience. However, to craft a state-of-the-art medical software solution, make sure that nothing is missed out and that the product relieves your target audience’s pains. Our company can help you all along the process–from planning, through the development, and to QA. Let’s discuss your project together and leave the technical realization to the professionals of the Axisbits team. Contact us to schedule a consultation.
