6 Reasons Why Doctors Should Consider Undertaking mHealth

Here Are 6 Reasons Why Doctors Should Consider mHealth

1. Increase Visibility

The global mobile health market in 2019 is estimated to USD 37 billion as per Statista. According to Research2Guidance, there were 325000 mobile health apps in 2017. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that around 1 billion people would be using personal healthcare ‘apps’ by 2020. Given the massive reach that the mobile health apps provide, doctors should join the bandwagon of mHealth to multiply their visibility.

2. Increase Efficiency

The mHealth app stores the patient’s previous records, diagnosis, medication, and other information. This improves efficiency, and the doctor can spend more time in counselling the patient.
In the developed countries, the average time that the doctor spends with the patients is around 20 minutes. The primary care consultancy in India, is an average of 2 minutes as per the study published in BMJ Open. mHealth will help doctors to spend quality time with patients.

3. Perpetrate Educational Content

According to the Health Education Library For People (HELP), health literacy is very low in India. Be it a common cold, or a heart attack, people hardly know what to do. mHealth can help to increase health literacy. Doctors can upload health related educational content, and establish their domain authority. Doctors can create awareness of the new technology for treatment of the diseases.

4. Management of Chronic Conditions

mHealth app can help to manage chronic diseases. Patients can monitor, and upload data on the vital signs, fitness, diet. This helps in the management of the diseases in the long run.

6. Data Bank of Medical Knowledge

Applications like UpToDate, Medscape, PEPID, Epocrates are a treasure house of information on:
- Alternate medications - New research - Drug approvals and information - Medical news, and other medical knowledge.

Subscription to UpToDate is around USD 495 (Rs.32000 approx) per year for an individual physician. In-app purchase of Epocrates Essentials is USD 174.99 (Rs.11000 approx) a year. There are registration charges for doctors on these apps. For example, Lybrate Cube plan costs Rs.799 per month for 1 clinic. Lybrate tab costs Rs.1349 per month. Extra tab can cost up to Rs.22000. Such costs can be easily offset by a loan for doctors offering loans up to Rs.2 crore with quick loan approvals and disbursals.