"One App To Rule Them All” – or Multiple Targeted Patient Apps?

mcn post Providers are realizing that patients are customers, and healthcare services have to be tailored to their diverse needs and circumstances. Personalized medicine is gaining steam. Does the same personalized approach work for patient-facing mobile apps?

While 66 out of the 100 largest US hospitals offer branded apps, only 2% of patients are using them, according to a recent Accenture study. Patients are not seeing value in the available hospital apps, or are simply not aware of them.

In our new eBook, Patient-Centered Care, One App at a Time, we explain why building multiple targeted apps for specific patient groups makes for the most efficient hospital mobile strategy, and one that ensures high app usage.

Different patient groups have different mobile needs. Besides, patient journeys consist of multiple mobile moments, such as:

Finding the closest urgent care center;
Getting wayfinding tips; ER wait times;
Obtaining a referral to a specialist;
Requesting an appointment; adding it to your calendar;
Adding a medication reminder;
Checking symptoms; etc.

All these mobile moments can, and should, be captured by your healthcare brand via useful mobile tools served at exactly the right time. Diluted, cluttered “one-app-to-rule-them-all” simply does not work in today’s customer-driven healthcare. That means, it’s time for a flexible multi-app strategy!

The challenge of hospital marketers and IT professionals is where to find the resources to build all these multiple apps? Providers can no longer embark on expensive, long-term application development projects, with multi-step planning and approval, only to find that the resulting app does not meet the patients’ expectations.