The ROI Of Mobile Apps For Your Healthcare Clients

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Mobile apps might be a hard sell for your clients, but an added benefit of cost reduction is sure to get even the most reluctant customer interested.

App development company MobileSmith has released a presentation on how mobile apps can be used to reduce costs in a healthcare environment. Topics in the presentation include the following:

• Mobile technology and its actual and potential impact on healthcare costs
• Examples of mobile use cases for cost reduction in hospitals
• Five steps to prototyping and building an efficient, low-cost mobile app

Impact On Costs

The presentation outlines cost savings through the use of mobile apps in multiple areas:

• Addressing chronic disease: An Accenture study of early trial data revealed a 15 to 20 percent reduction in hospital days and 30 percent fewer ER visits. The trial data showed that mHealth could potentially save the U.S. more than $23 billion just by targeting patients with chronic diseases (specifically diabetes and heart disease), at a savings of $2,000 to $3,000 per patient).
   
• Avoiding non-urgent use of the ER: iTriage, an app that offers a symptom checker, location of the nearest urgent care or retail clinics and ERs, and a comparative cost of those providers, boasts a potential savings of $300 to $3000 per visit.
   
• Reducing preventable readmissions: The Mayo Clinic conducted a controlled study involving mobile monitoring applications for cardiac rehab patients, and found a 40 percent decrease in readmission for patients who did use the app, resulting in a significant reduction in costs and penalties.
   
• Improving prescription adherence: Medication non-adherence accounts for $300 billion in annual losses. A branded app with reminders could easily send push messages to the provider and patient to help improve adherence rates.

Talking To Physicians

The presentation cites a 2013 eClinicalWorks survey that found that 93 percent of physicians believe that mHealth apps actually can improve patient outcomes, and that 89 percent are likely to recommend a mobile health app to a patient. In contrast, of the 43,000+ health and wellness apps that are currently available for download in the U.S. iTunes store, the vast majority are very limited in scope, functionality, and efficiency.

Complicating this more is the fact that physicians are generally not willing to endorse an app before proof of success has been demonstrated or professional approval has been given.

This highlights the gulf between mobile app developers who don’t have patient or hospital best interests in mind and clinicians who seldom have the means or technical skills to create the apps themselves. This makes the fact that only 3 percent of U.S. hospitals offered a branded app in 2013 unsurprising.  

Go Deeper

To get started on building a better healthcare mobile app through the use of best practices, read the BSM article, “Building A Better Healthcare App.”