The year 2020 marked itself in history as the time that impacted almost all walks of life, including medical and nursing. The healthcare market gained a significant boost through telemedicine, including Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), health education services, and virtual doctor-patient consultation.
Health has become a top priority in light of recent events and opened opportunities for medical startups and virtual nursing assistants to make their mark. However, remember that a medical app requires deep market analysis for trends and developmental steps.
This short guide for beginners will tell you how these apps work, some renowned medical apps, and the steps for development.
Key Takeaways
- How nurse apps work and trends in the field
- Listing a few popular apps for nurses.
- Tips to develop an effective nursing app.
Software for Nurses and How They Work?
Healthcare is a broad niche that includes virtual nursing assistants and related software ranging from basic to professional ones. Similarly, the purpose of each application also differs accordingly, but the idea is the same for each.
Healthcare apps make life easy for nurses by tracking patient data, 24/7 availability, sharing tips for healthcare improvement, remote assistance, and much more. In short, the app’s purpose depends on the chosen software category.
AI-powered software for nurses works with people of all age groups. These applications have a rule-based engine and algorithms that work with the latest medical protocols. Partner clinics and hospitals provide content and protocols to keep the software updated.
Why Use a Nursing Application?
The nursing sector today is on a constant move and requires timely access to accurate and updated information. With such short response windows, manual searching of information from medical books or verification is impossible.
Nursing applications respond to patient moods and intonations while collecting data according to anonymous symptoms. The AI integrations in these applications allow nurses to remain well-informed about the status and conditions of multiple patients, enhancing the efficiency of telemedicine.
Virtual nursing features speak to patients with a natural tone that is essential for patients with chronic diseases or the elderly. The emotional analysis alerts handlers to handle unusual states such as depression or anxiety immediately. The app also helps nurses administrate prescribed medications and suggest patients in need of medical counseling.
Some of the key reasons the medical and healthcare industry should consider nursing applications include:
- Reduction in care costs
- Mitigation of nursing challenges
- Providing care to a patient having chronic diseases
- Effective and responsive elderly care
- Collection of data for existing and future analysis
A professional app and web development company considers all the medical protocols during development to ensure it covers every healthcare criterion.
Key Features of Medical Apps for Nurses
Before developing a nursing application, software and web design agencies need to understand the added features. They can divide the app into two categories to make a beneficial solution: patients and healthcare professionals.
We will point out the necessary features for both categories to decide the need and requirements of an app.
Patient Features
Startups must create an app that patients can understand and use without difficulty. Easy interface and access prevent a lengthy instruction manual and processes. Some of the key features for the patient category include:
Chabot: Chabot is an important feature to include that enables round-the-clock availability of quality information. The bots converse and respond like natural speakers, and patients can find most of their solutions through a chatbot.
Nursing Avatars: Apps that offer daily health checks use virtual nursing avatars. These avatars should look like a living person and offer information on the health status of patients, and Avatars communicate according to the tone of a nurse or care provider.
Symptoms Detector: Most modern nursing applications now have a symptoms checker embedded during development. The detector identifies symptoms through data analysis and passes them to healthcare professionals. They can contact a person immediately to discuss and administer the abnormalities found.
Information Module: The content module contains updated information about the latest diseases, their symptoms, and prevention methods.
Consultation: Patients can talk to a doctor through chat, video, or regular calls.
Reminders: Patients can set reminders for specific care or prescribed medicines using smart machine learning algorithms.
Log In: Patients have a signup feature that establishes their profiles to store past medical records, medicine, or test results for immediate access.
Professional Features
The other side of a nursing app is for professional doctors and nurses. Features of this category include:
Patient Management: Nurses can see all the information about a patient to remotely give them the necessary care and attention. They can also respond to any deviations in the conditions and add push notifications for patients with useful information.
Symptom Analysis and Consultation: Nurses have access to a symptom analysis module that they can analyze or send to doctors for recommendations. The doctors provide necessary consultation through chat, voice, or video calls if needed.
Registration: A healthcare professional or nurse can sign up for the application using social media or emails to remain in constant communication with patients.
Payment and Claim Management: If a chatbot redirects a patient to billing, care providers receive information for payment transactions or manage insurance claims (if any).
Developing Virtual Nursing Assistants
Developing software for nurses requires the same steps as any other app development. However, there are some specific requirements for healthcare development that other projects do not contain.
Developers need to work in collaboration with the healthcare organization’s in-house technicians. It allows them to ensure compatibility between existing software/hardware installed and the one in development.
The opinions of real nurses are also required as it offers insights into functions, processes, protocols, and databases. Finally, any third-party software developed has to adhere to the state’s legal requirements.
After covering the basics, developers can follow the developmental steps, including:
Creating a Working Strategy
Developing a strategy means aligning the business and performance needs with all the potential technical possibilities. At this stage, developers must identify the users, application integration with IT structure, desired features, and outcomes according to user surveys.
Analysis of Requirement
After planning the strategy, a professional company for web and mobile app development in Houston has to analyze the requirements. Developers study industry requirements for data processing, user needs, compatibility, legacy systems, and other functions. The team then defines the budget and timeline needed to complete the project according to workforce, resources, and technology.
Planning
Planning is an important stage of development, especially when new software has to integrate with existing systems. The team has to chalk out all the details for the features and inform the organization about possible downtimes. The team also identifies data migration requirements during this stage.
Prototyping
After analysis of requirements and planning, the team designs an initial layout that shows the interface and user flow. Users review the prototype design and give their feedback. Developers consider these comments to align functions with protocols and bring the idea closer to the vision.
Development
At this stage, developers start coding and piece all the individual features into one system. After development, the team sends for acceptance whether the app performs with intended functions or needs more work.
Testing
As the app passes through various developmental stages, it needs constant testing to ensure functionality, reliability, and performance. Testers check whether the app offers the best user experience and address all the issues before final deployment.
Deployment and Maintenance
After testing, the final deployment phase takes place to integrate the app and look for connectivity issues. The development team integrates the app with the existing systems, creates backups, and maintains the app after deployment.
Note: Each step is necessary to ensure a working system and avoid issues such as running into legal processing laws.
Best App for Nurses in 2022
Some of the best apps for nurses that offer patient care and other facilities today include:
- Eponyms
- Med Mnemonics
- Nursing Dictionary
- Nursing Central
- Nursing Drug Handbook
- Merck Manual Professional
- Medscape
- Pedi Stat
- Infectious Disease Queries
- MediBabble
- Lab Values Medical Reference
- Lippincott Nurse Advisor
- MDCalc
- Pill Identifier
- Nurse Grid
- Medical Dictionary
- Nurse Pocket Guide Diagnosis
- Symptomia
- Black’s Medical Dictionary
Conclusion
Virtual nursing assistants and software for nurses have become a need of today’s healthcare scenario. These apps offer multiple patient care administration with remote features and 24/7 availability. Patients can get the necessary care anytime without having a nurse around and professionals can consult their patients virtually anywhere.
Development of nursing apps require careful planning to integrate them with existing legacy systems and enable functions without any downtime.
