Top 10 mHealth Apps That Are Revolutionizing Healthcare

A list of the top mHealth apps that are making it easy for consumers to access patient care, keep track of their health, and improve overall wellbeing. 

In the light of COVID-19, where people are forced to stay healthy indoors, mobile health (mHealth) apps have come to our rescue. At present, there are over 400,000 mHealth apps available in the app stores. According to Global Market Insights, the global mHealth market is estimated to reach $289.4 billion by 2025. From helping with mental wellbeing to tracking health using wearables, mHealth apps are one of the key components of medtech innovation. 

To comprehend the ramifications of smart applications in healthcare, we have to think about its key qualities and rewards. Here are ten ways in which mHealth apps are revolutionizing the healthcare segment, especially in response to COVID19.

1. Mental Wellbeing 

The public health emergencies due to the pandemic outburst have undoubtedly impacted the mental wellbeing of healthcare professionals. For doctors and nurses, this is a time of increased pressure and stress. It is quite reasonable for these professionals to experience feelings of distress in this situation. Her is an mHealth apps with exceptional features that are helping healthcare professionals during this rough time.

Unmind

With unrealistic targets and bureaucracy, the workplace has become a breeding ground for mental health issues. Unmind, the B2B digital mental health platform was developed to fix this problem, especially for employees.

Since its inception, the application has raised £4.7m across three funding rounds. Unmind offers an introduction to mental health and explains various exercises to enhance mood and concentration. In collaboration with psychologists, it trains the employees through videos, audio, and interactive content to diminish the stigma in the workplace and help them take care of both their mental well-being alongside colleagues’.

89% of staff members increased confidence and their understanding of mental health after using Unmind.  Moreover, this application is utilized globally by top brands like Square Enix, John Lewis, and Just Eat.

2. Maternal Care and Childcare

Mobile health apps are booming in the field of maternal and child health. As per the WHO report, over 800 women die every day from preventable causes pertaining to labor and pregnancy across the globe. Almost all of those women (around 99%) are from a developing nation. These intricacies can be forestalled altogether with more remarkable access to instructive materials for both expectant mothers and health care providers. That’s where mHealth apps become a lifesaver. These apps allow family members and caregivers to keep a close tab on the pregnant woman and her health parameters. This can play a significant role if she suffers from chronic conditions and is unable to visit doctors, especially due to the shut down of cities.

Ovia Health 

Ovia Health is a popular maternity and family benefits solution. It helps parents raise their families alongside careers, while reducing healthcare costs and helping employers retain the workforce. Since launching in 2012, the firm has helped over 13 million families by offering some of the well-known apps such as Ovia Pregnancy, Ovia Parenting, Ovia Fertility, etc. These apps aids working women and families in making important life and health decisions regarding parenthood. 

3. Diagnostic Tool

Smartphones come with sensor technology, which can be put into great use by application developers. In terms of mHealth technology, developers are leveraging this super feature as a diagnostic tool to address real-life challenges right from home. 

Sony’s mSafety Mobile Health

Sony’s mSafety mobile health platform with a customizable smartwatch and streamlined cloud connectivity is one of the best examples of mHealth diagnostic tool. It is designed explicitly for mobile health firms looking for a platform to build patient monitoring solutions.

In Europe, it is used by hospitals to monitor compliance in kidney patients. Besides, some partners are utilizing movement data to estimate if a patient is at immediate risk of falling and then notifying him for safety measures.

4. A Smarter Approach to Medical Tests

Medical tests and examinations are now wholly revolutionized. With the flexibility of delivering real-time medical reports, mHealth apps offer the convenience of examining the medical reports and health tests right from home. Apart from complex assessments, the majority of the examinations would now be able to perform using cell phones.

Mobile MIM Radiology App 

This is one of the first FDA-approved radiology imaging applications known to help the imaging professionals by offering portable access to medical images, such as MRI, SPECT, X-ray, PET, CT, and Ultrasound. MIM allows the medical experts to use cloud technology to save diagnostic-quality X-rays and then spot different areas of it for further investigation. Using this app, clinicians can test intensity values, distance, and display measurement lines, annotations as well as regions of interest. A secure network transfer is used to securely transfer the images to the app from a hospital or physician’s office.

5. Primary Care from Home

If you are unwell and don’t prefer going out to the hospital fearing coronavirus, primary care health applications can be your savior. It brings the hospital right to your home with a few clicks. This concept was earlier adopted by countries like Kazakhstan and Rwanda and other remote regions. 

The remote consultation solution was launched when there was a considerable demand to assess people while keeping them safe from the COVID19. Direct-to-consumer telemedicine apps like PlushCare and Amwell offer low-cost doctor visits during this time.

Nutrimedy

Nutrimedy is a B2B startup with a care delivery system for clinical nutrition using telehealth enabled mobile and web platform. It lets clinical dietitians deliver personalized care outside the hospital for over different health 50 conditions. Nutrimedy works with medtech, health systems, biotech, and self-insured employers. This novel telehealth app delivers evidence-based nutrition management to patients at home. It allows organizations to create personalized patient plans, which are sent by experts combined with one-on-one interventions to support patient health.

6. Chronic Disease Management 

mHealth apps plays a decisive role in taking care of chronic diseases and health conditions. For ailments like cardiac disorders, joint inflammation, diabetes, thyroid issues, asthma, and other incessant medical problems, these apps help you identify symptoms and notifies you if any medical supervision is required.

GOLD COPD Strategy

GOLD COPD Strategy is a great app for medical professionals looking to manage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). By strictly following the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Diseases (GOLD) standards, it lets doctors examine patients with this particular disease, and administer a COPD assessment test. Moreover, it allows doctors to record the patient’s status and track the symptoms so that they can better predict the severity and course of COPD.

7. Medical Calculators 

Medical calculators lets professionals to easily calculate various indices and scores, with a user-friendly interface that hides the intricacies of the procedures. Generally, these calculators are projected for use by health care experts, whereas the use by the general public is discouraged.

MDCalc

MDCalc helps medical professionals “do calculations, process algorithms and scores, and assess risk—all using the latest and best evidence—to make patients better, faster.” Over 14  years old, it was started, owned and run by two practicing academic emergency physicians, Dr. Graham Walker and Dr. Joseph Habboushe. Hundreds of academics and researchers have written about medical calculators and clinical decision rules for the website, and is there no outside money or influence.

8. Instant Reference and Information Gathering

Mobile devices are invaluable tools for healthcare professionals to search for or access medical literature and other information sources right from their comfort. According to the NCBI survey, mobile devices are used to obtain medical journal websites by 60% of medical school professionals and students, whereas 74% used it to read medical news online.

Several famous medical journals, including The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and BMJ, provide apps for users to view the article on mobile phones. PubMed is one such mobile applications built by the National Library of Medicine in the United States.

PubMed for Handhelds

It is a mobile search application for healthcare professionals comprising more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books, and life science journals. Some of the most useful features of PubMed are stated below:

• It allows the users to search for journal articles by category, such as diagnosis, etiology, therapy, prognosis, specificity or sensitivity, and clinical prediction guidelines.
• Users can read the latest abstracts and summaries of MEDLINE indexed journals.

9. Medical Data Management

Mobile apps can make it easy for patients to access medical services especially given the COVID-19 crisis. Accessing reports, test results, advice and medical history is being made easy for patients, and remote appointments/video calls with doctors are being made possible in-app. 

Patient Access 

Patient Access (in partnership with the NHS) is the UK’s biggest online health services platform with over 10 million users. It connects GP community pharmacy services with clinical content and tools, and helps users better manage their healthcare.

10. Insurance and Claims Processing

Health insurance has become more critical than ever because of COVID19. However, the victims of this pandemic can easily claim the insurance using apps in their handheld devices. These apps improve the overall insurance process by offering a better user experience and unified claim processing. 

With the advent of apps, people can keep all types of insurances in one place and claim records with live tracking. Covered California is an excellent example of mobile insurance app. This application has been created in view of the medical coverage specialist, where every user is provided with an option to utilize it for comparison shopping.

It is an instrument for distinguishing the top-notch subsidy plans and look at the proposals in your area. Towards the start of its launch, more than 7,200 health medical coverage agents had pre-enlisted for training to certify them to offer Covered California individual or any of the small group insurance policies. 

Bonus: Spill

Spill is all-in-one mental health support for employees through Slack. Since launching the Slack product in January 2020, Spill has gone from 0 to 90 paying companies in just ten months – including big names of the tech world like Typeform, Depop and Bulb.

Conclusion

Given the advancements in AI, cloud and augmented reality, the future of mHealthcare apps looks promising. In the next few years, it guarantees improved healthcare delivery, better personal health tracking and improved quality of patient care. 

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