How to Choose the Best Healthcare Platform

Every minute is important when it comes to healthcare. Timely access to medical care can not only keep you healthy, but also save your life. 

Digital technologies affect every sphere of our life including healthcare. Professional medical services and platforms improve doctor-patient interaction making it simple and effective

All these opportunities make medicine open for everybody. Healthcare platforms help patients to seek medical attention at any time and have greater control over their health.

In this article, we will evaluate digital healthcare platforms and find out how to choose the best one.

Advantages of Healthcare Platforms for Patients and Doctors

According to the research published on Grand View Research, the global remote patient monitoring software and services market size was valued at USD 6.4 billion in 2021. Moreover, it is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 32.8% from 2022 to 2030. All these indicate a huge popularity of healthcare platforms.

Fast pace of life dictates its own rules. Being overbusy every day, people are increasingly seeking medical assistance online. They find doctors and clinics on the Web, have online consultation with a physician, order medications, and book appointments. Thus, they solve two problems at once: save time and find a reliable medical specialist quickly.

Those days are gone when people waited for a phone call from the clinic or physician’s office to get medical test results. Introduction of digital technologies in healthcare made it possible to automate many tasks.

Today, healthcare platforms offer the following benefits for patients: 

  • Booking an appointment with a doctor online.
  • Custom profile on the platform where you can specify contact information and health insurance plan. It also allows tracking future appointments with a doctor.
  • Telehealth for online consultations, a smart virtual nurse assistant to determine a possible diagnosis, quick access to the test results, etc.
  • Quick search for medical specialists by different criteria.
  • Medical appointment reminder.

Over the past few years, medical professionals have received new digital tools and resources to provide high-quality and accessible treatment. Industry analysts from the University of Illinois at Chicago found this to be ‘one of the most tangible ways that technology has changed healthcare.’ 

Doctors use professional online services to improve medical practice, exchange experience and get the latest medical news. In some cases, they can use an electronic database with classification of diseases, their causes and symptoms. It helps to treat a disease and improves the quality of medical care.

Benefits of healthcare platforms for doctors:

  • getting online notifications about booked appointments for visit;
  • appointment schedule;
  • publishing medical articles;
  • getting to latest medical news;
  • access to a large database with classification of diseases;
  • creating a medical community;
  • providing information about the place of work (clinic or physician’s office);
  • saving time on keeping paper records.

There are also multifunctional services that provide benefits for both patients and doctors. DeinArzt is a good example of such services. It’s an open healthcare platform that has two key purposes: booking an appointment with a doctor online and improvement of medical practice for doctors. After registration on the platform, doctors can communicate with patients online. Moreover, they can find colleagues, add them to the network and confirm each other’s skills.

Criteria for Choosing a Healthcare Platform

Obviously, the choice of a healthcare platform depends on its functionality. User experience is another important criteria. No matter how well looking and effective the platform is. If it’s not user-friendly, you will hardly choose it.

So, the main criteria for choosing a healthcare platform are:

1. Type of healthcare platform

There are different types of platforms that have different purposes:

  • search for a doctor and booking an appointment online;
  • patient monitoring;
  • communication with patients and online consultations;
  • health maintenance and fitness;
  • ordering medications:
  • virtual healthcare and telehealth.

2. Functions of the platform

Generally, a platform has basic and additional functions. For example, communication and online consulting platforms offer telehealth and virtual healthcare services.

Many software developers also offer additional paid services. 

3. Health insurance cover

Make sure that the platform you choose has health insurance cover you’ve picked. Otherwise it will be useless.

4.  Artificial intelligence for clinical decision support

Artificial intelligence (AI) improves the diagnostic accuracy and predictive interventions of healthcare platforms, optimizes clinical productivity and increases the quality of medical care. 

In addition, AI also helps patients to have a more personalized experience when navigating the platform. For example, smart virtual nurse assistants can collect information about symptoms, detect diseases and even fix an appointment with a doctor.

5. Usability and website navigation

Like any other digital product, healthcare platforms should be user-friendly, simple and intuitive to navigate. All these parameters help users to find the information they need quickly and explore the platform further. The more clicks users have to do to find a doctor, book an appointment or order medications, the more likely they will choose another service.

In conclusion

Healthcare platforms significantly improve access to healthcare ensuring that everyone gets the care they need. Patients can find and contact any medical specialist, get a consultation online and monitor their health. Doctors use such platforms to improve medical practice, provide better healthcare and develop professional skills.

Digital technology’s impact transforms many processes in the healthcare industry. For example, information technology automates the process of searching for a doctor and booking an appointment, helps to have quick online consultations and provides a virtual nurse assistant to determine a potential diagnosis.

About the Guest Author

When Anja studied Medical Informatics at Medical University of Vienna, she dreamt to become the medical consultancy worker. But she started to write her own dairy in the social media during her last year of education. Today working for DeinArzt together with the realization of her dream she is the blogger helping both in the medical area and having good experience in creative writing for her own needs. But she wants to improve her skills every day, so she is happy to catch any possibility to publish her article!

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