Healthcare, Page 18 Category

“The global telemedicine market was valued to be 40 Billion USD in the year 2019. By the year 2026, it is expected to grow exponentially and cross 175 Billion USD”

These statistics forecasted by Statista, a renowned market research and statistics portal, indicate the soaring scope of the telemedicine apps and similar other healthcare IT services. The transformations that these digital advancements have brought in the healthcare domain are revolutionary. Especially in today’s unprecedented times of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown situations, these solutions are all the more in demand. No wonder why several hospitals, healthcare providers, and even individual practitioners are looking forward to developing customized telemedicine apps and software solutions

If you too are here for a comprehensive knowledge of telemedicine app development like a doctor-on-demand app, this blog is for you. We have outlined the vital details required in the development process. Let’s delve into details.

Telemedicine apps, also known as telehealth apps are the tools used for the delivery of healthcare services by the providers to the patients, usually from remote locations. These healthcare apps use new-age technologies to ensure relentless communication between both parties and bridge the gap between them. These facilitate the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of the patients without the need to be physically present at the hospital or clinic. Thus, the telemedicine apps are widely being used for remote medical assistance as people are increasingly drawn towards such advanced technologies to monitor their well-being.

Healthcare organizations or individual care providers deliver various services to the patients. Based on the services, these apps can be categorized as

Patients get instant access to all kinds of healthcare specialists without the need to travel to their clinics or hospitals as they can consult the doctor through the app itself using video/audio calls and one to one chats. Minor health issues like fever or cold can be addressed immediately using video calls and also patients can get ePrescriptions through the app. All the records are saved digitally and there isn’t the need to maintain the paper records. These apps provide them authorized permission to text the doctor and enable healthier conversations. They can easily and conveniently access these apps from any device sitting at the very comfort of their homes. It lowers the cost of traveling and saves efforts, thereby ensuring better satisfaction.

Using these telemedicine solutions, care providers can simultaneously treat more patients. It enables extensive patient reach. They can remotely monitor the discharged patients’ health. These apps offer them the freedom to better manage their work leading to fewer missed appointments or cancellations. Also, these apps enhance the collaboration with colleagues on patient cases. Saved medical documents, integration with EHRs or EMRs, etc. help the doctors to monitor the patients efficiently, ensure better patient engagement, and improve decision-making.

For architecting a successful telemedicine app, it is crucial to have at least the basic features in the app. So whether you decide to go with an MVP model or want a fully functional app with advanced features, we have listed important features accordingly.

While building telemedicine applications, you may face several challenges like language barriers where patients cannot communicate their health conditions correctly. Also, there could be other challenges in making the apps HIPAA complaint, implementation of UI/UX, backend integration, etc. The development team may even face some challenges while considering the scalability of the apps.

To mitigate the above challenges, businesses should consult healthcare app development companies for developing robust, secure and scalable telehealth apps.

For a decade or so, telemedicine app development has gained traction and has turned out to be a lucrative investment for healthcare companies and other hospital bodies. It not only ensures better hospital management, but also contributes to enriching patient experience. It also offers a competitive edge over other top players in the market.

For any other queries, mail us at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com !

Some of the Healthcare apps, eHealth, mHealth apps in the US have to comply with HIPAA which is a set of standards meant to protect the sensitive health information of patients. If these rules are violated, the concerned entities may face severe repercussions.

Here is one such real-case scenario of a leading provider of insurance in the US, Anthem, Inc.

In October 2018, Anthem, health insurance provider was charged a heavy penalty for neglecting security and privacy rules set by HIPAA. It started with a small phishing email and later led to a massive data breach. There was an aggressive cyber-attack by the hackers that may have exposed the protected health data (PHI) of approximately 79 million patients which further lead to the risk of identity fraud.

Also, the infuriated patients sued Anthem and won a settlement of $115 million. Not only this, but Anthem was charged by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at $16 million. Had the company followed HIPAA compliance, they could have saved millions as well as their brand image.

If such a large corporation could go through such devastating attacks and penalties for violating HIPAA rules, smaller practices need to be all the more cautious.

Today, thousands of health apps and software are being used by patients as well as doctors. A tremendous amount of sensitive health and personal data continually flows through them. So, the owners of telemedicine apps, hospital bodies using the healthcare apps, healthcare IT services developing healthcare apps carry a huge responsibility to protect this data. In case they fail to do so, it could lead to data breaches, healthcare frauds, identity thefts, blackmail, etc. So, the concerned entities must abide by HIPAA guidelines. Here are some key advantages to following them:

Any medical app involves crucial medical data. HIPAA’s primary focus is on securing this data i.e. PHI. PHI is categorized majorly in two parts- health records/data and personally identifiable data. As per the Department of Health and Human Services, PHI’s personally identifiable data includes 18 classes namely:

The below-mentioned individuals and organizations willing to develop healthcare apps must adhere to HIPAA-compliant structure and its guidelines.

Healthcare Providers: Any healthcare service provider, big or small, that requires electronic processing or transmission of medical data for certain transactions like requests for authorization, claims, inquiries for eligibility, and other such transactions comes under this category. These include hospitals, or individual practitioners like doctors, dentists, psychologists, etc.

Health Plans: These comprise of entities that pay the cost of healthcare expenses, for instance, insurance providers, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), employer-sponsored group health plans, multi-employer health plans, government- or church-sponsored health plans, etc.

Healthcare Clearinghouses: These are the entities that act as middlemen between the healthcare service providers and insurance companies. These process nonstandard data they receive from a healthcare organization into a standard format or vice versa.

Business Associates: The entities that store, collect, process, or transmit PHI on behalf of all the aforesaid covered entities.

Any entity that wants to build a HIPAA compliant medical app or software must do the following:

Also, here is a list of security measures to be taken for protecting and controlling access to health data in a medical app.

Limit Access of data: Limit the access to sensitive data by providing a unique ID to concerned authorities and also the patients. This helps in tracking the activity being carried out in the application.

Entity Authentication: Verify the person/entity trying to access the data with the use of passwords, biometrics, PHI PINs, token, digital signatures, etc. The app must provide access only to authenticated users.

Encryption of the data: Ensure that the PHI data in healthcare apps is encrypted before storing it on the servers and databases. Use tools like BitLocker, File Vault, etc for encrypting the data. Encryption greatly ensures data integrity by protecting it from hackers. Without decryption keys, the hackers would just keep struggling around without any results.

Using Secured protocols: The data transmitted over networks and between the tiers of a system, should be channeled through HTTPS protocol that encrypts data using SSL and TLS. If PHI data has to be sent through email, then HIPAA compliant email services should be used.

Ensure Data Backup: Backup of all PHI is a must. It must be stored in various locations so that in case of a system crash or database corruption or a fire in a data center, the data remains intact.

Discard PHI data after use: Any sensitive data should be permanently destroyed if not needed anymore. In case it remains in your systems, scanners, biomedical equipment, memory cards, network cards, etc., it is vulnerable to threats

Automatic Logging-off: In case of inactivity, the app having PHI should terminate the session automatically. The users will need to log-in again by re-entering the password.

Monitoring and Auditing of data: Monitoring and auditing of the data in healthcare apps must be conducted regularly. Every time a user logs in or out, the details must be recorded. The data can be monitored via hardware, software, or other procedures. Activity on PHI data can be recorded using a log file or log table in the database.

Extra Mobile App Security: The security measures in mobile apps like screen-lock, remote data erasing, full-device encryption, etc. must be suggested to the users of the app to enhance the security of the data. These can’t be forced on the users though.

Unauthorized access of PHI data from healthcare apps will lead to huge fines that can cost you a fortune but HIPAA compliance can save you from these penalties. HIPAA security will assure the auditors that you have done enough to protect medical data from phishing, social engineering, breaches, etc. Though adhering to HIPPA seems cumbersome, yet they guarantee future-proof apps, secured software solutions, infrastructures for a booming healthcare market.

For any other queries, drop us a sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com