Healthcare professionals, patients, and practitioners, everyone can leverage healthcare apps which are timely, focused, and free/minimal-cost.
The growing innovation and development of mHealth applications clearly indicate that the healthcare sector is transforming to a user-centric model and addressing their requirements.
Healthcare applications also deliver information to providers to simplify healthcare and hospital operation management.
The worldwide mHealth market is anticipated to grow approx $332 billion by the end of 2025 which would be a fivefold boost from $21 billion in 2016.
A good healthcare software development and design focus on essential app features, easy-to-understand mobile app navigation, and user assistance.
We are here to provide you with some practices to follow in designing healthcare apps.
Healthcare App Design Practices
1. Do research
Before you begin prototyping an app interface, it is necessary to target the audience, their location, socio-demographics, and characteristics. The collected information aids to identify how users interact with an app.
With the proper research, you can solve the following queries:
- Who will be your target audience?
- What do they like and dislike?
- What kind of applications do they use daily?
- What would be the purpose of using these applications?
The more precisely you answer these questions, the more user-centric your application will be.
2. Assess other mHealth app design
In this step also, you need to go through the research but in a more specific way. Let’s call it competitor analysis. Before developing an application, check what kind of design and features your competitors offer.
Assess market needs and decide crucial app features that will address these demands, what your app is missing, and what to do to deliver a highly convenient and useful application.
It is significant to ensure what you are performing is advantageous for users. In this way, your mobile app will excel among others offering similar services.
3. Prioritise app functionalities
When the above-mentioned two steps get accomplished, you can plan the functionality of your app. While healthcare app development, make a plan for an informative onboarding. It helps you to make the user interface intuitive and avoid user frustration.
4. Plan navigation
Clear mobile app navigation is a crucial feature for any software product design. Appropriate app navigation represents swiftness and ease of use.
Doctors and clients can get essential details faster as it is directly connected with health and life. Simple components such as the hamburger menu, navigation drawer, tab bar, etc., enhance user experience.
5. Select fonts, colours, and visuals
Often this step gets underestimated. However, colour and font are essential aspects of user experience designing in healthcare.
Visuals have all the power to deliver the right message and enlighten the user’s mood. Assessing different medical apps, you discover that most apps are designed with neutral shades.
It is biassed to say that designers can not use colours that are used less. Actually, it is more advantageous to design an application that is unique from the pool of blue healthcare apps. Make sure that the basic colours align with the business purpose and mission.
mHealth App Design Features
1. Notifications
Notifications are significant for mHealth applications as they keep informing users about any update or status change.
Notifications vary based on the status, purpose, type, etc. It will let you customise UI and UX design according to a particular situation. But note that notification status and type options merge to build relevant, informative, and timely notifications for every use case.
2. Payment processing
If you want to include paid consultation services or subscription plans, it is necessary to add payment processing functionality to your mobile app. It should be flawless and highly secure.
|3. Cloud integration
Users love steady and faster access to health records, test results, treatment information, etc. Integrated cloud storage is an on-demand solution for your mobile app, with serverless app development.
4. Chat, message, and Video conferencing
Your mHealth app will outshine competitors if users can effortlessly collaborate with healthcare professionals, chat with them or get video training sessions. Such functionalities let them receive an urgent doctor consultation from the comfort of their home whenever they require it.
5. AI integration
AI integration is one of the advantageous features of any app. Leveraging AI algorithms, you can offer symptom checker features and health tracking. Moreover, AI assistants support app efficacy and recommend more accurate analysis.
6. User profile
The user profile feature for patients and healthcare providers looks obvious enough. It makes your mobile app personalised and lets the users manage their profiles based on their requirements, upload essential detail, etc. When it comes to design, user profiles need to be user-friendly and intuitive in navigation.
7. Accessibility
The main objective of healthcare app design is to make the app accessible to every possible user. To make it more accessible:
- Put the key components in a thumb zone as it is the most comfortable area for touch while using one-handedly
- Allow users to change the view to horizontal
- Provide options to change the text size
- Add voice navigation
In a Nutshell
The health and medical sector has been considered one of the top three industries that accelerate the growth of mobile devices.
Mobile health can enhance the entire healthcare system by boosting efficiency, productivity, collaboration, costs, and quality of healthcare services. Uses of mHealth will extend and transform as healthcare trends and needs fluctuate in the future.
