Online Doctor Apps
Technology is taking us to the future and beyond. We are now past the days where we have to rush to the hospital for every little thing. We can now get the treatment we need from the comfort of our houses. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but your doctor doesn’t have to be away anymore. A smartphone can keep your doctor closer to you than a traditional hospital visit ever could.
Smartphones are now more than entertainment devices. They are now lifesavers, and they do this through mobile health apps or mhealth apps. These applications help reduce the need for patients to visit hospitals and get started on their treatments early. Also, it ensures that patients manage their health challenges with the help of professionals. The creation of mhealth apps has helped reduce patients’ reliance on diagnosis from independent and uniformed diagnosis.
Mhealth has come to bring value to patients and protect them. Branching off from this goal is a list of excellent benefits that many people should know about but don’t. At this page, we will fill this gap for you by providing a host of benefits that you will enjoy with mhealth.
Mhealth Apps Explained
You have likely interacted with a mhealth app one time or the other without knowing. Summarily, mhealth apps are apps that promote the digital integration of medical and other health practices through smartphones, tablets, laptops, or other similar devices. In addition, they are modern means of accessing healthcare without the need to visit a hospital.
Mhealth apps are of different types;
- Healthy living and fitness apps. These apps provide diet plans, nutrition monitoring, stress tracking, fitness plans, etc.
- Health apps that allow patients access their records and track their health challenges under the watchful guide of a doctor.
- Diagnostic apps assist medical practitioners in diagnosing and recommending medicine to patients.
Benefits of Mhealth Apps
The underlying goal and benefit of Mhealth apps are to provide value for patients and protect them. These apps should help facilitate healthy living for patients and also improve their lives. These apps work using artificial intelligence and machine learning to make an accurate diagnosis while also having doctors available for guide and communication. From its core benefit of providing value and protecting patients, these doctor apps have the following benefits.
Easier Access to Patient’s Record
Online doctor apps or mobile health apps have become critical when it comes to accessing electronic patient records. Before, only the hospital controlled a patient’s medical records. So, in any circumstance where the patient changes hospital, there has to be the retrieval of the patient’s record for onward transmission to the patient’s new hospital. With mhealth apps, doing that has become obsolete, and medical data isn’t as centralized as it used to be.
Now, patients can access their health data at the click of their smartphone screen and get optimal medical advice outside the traditional hospital setting. You might think this isn’t all that special, but having a person’s medical records can come in handy when you envisage an emergency situation. These applications also allow patients or their doctors to discover a change in health early. The reason is, it contains comprehensive information about a patient—for instance, their breathing pattern, heart rate, etc.
Reduction In Medical Errors
What do you get when your health data is readily available? You get a reduction in medical mistakes. It is as simple as that. These mistakes are not all negligence, as pointed out by experts at custom papers. When a doctor doesn’t have the necessary information about the patient to make an informed treatment, they happen. With the ease of accessing patient data and the integration of diagnostic systems into these online doctor apps, doctors can now make better decisions. Through these better decisions, doctors can now be twice as efficient.
Improved Communication
It is interesting how those against mhealth apps insist that mhealth can cause communication problems. They seem not to realize that the traditional medical system promotes communication problems. When you have a doctor’s appointment, you won’t be the first person the doctor has seen that day. Your doctor could even be tired from attending to many patients and have to follow to many more after you. This could create an atmosphere where you and your doctor doesn’t have enough time to communicate with you and truly listen to you. Thus, miscommunication occurs.
Mhealth is a solution to this problem as a doctor doesn’t have to do everything alone. The artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms programmed into these applications can help. They can help with the diagnosis while giving the doctor the job of reviewing the diagnosis, freeing more time to communicate and advise them.
In addition to this, these online doctor apps come with in-app communication means which allow patients and doctors to stay connected all day long. Now, patients can text, call, video, make appointments, manage appointments, access drug guides, etc., all on the same app.
