Is mHealth A Boon To Pharmaceutical Industry

Mobile health or mHealth is amongst the greatest advanced developments within the healthcare industry which have proven incredible growth over the last couple of years. This phenomenon is noticed because of the growth in personal health devices, that can be easily worn or can be used by having a smart phone or can be used in a tablet. Mobile Health means the usage of mobile communications, such as for example personal digital assistant, mobile phones, laptops and so on, for health and information services. Based on the Cutting Edge Information's white paper release 2015, the value of mHealth within the pharmaceutical sector will keep growing.

Although figures don't always show the overall facts, certain figures mentioned within the white paper are very informative. During the 1st quarter in 2014 the overall mHealth applications on the iOS and the Android platforms leaped over 100,000 and keeps growing. Even more informative is that in the past thirty months 5,000 among those applications gained revenues over $1 million. Mobile strategies this time account for 14% of marketing blends of teams which were surveyed. Some other sources apparently support these results. According to the predictions of Mobile Health Market News, clinical mHealth spending is going to rise $2.5 billion during 2011 to 2016. As per mHealthWatch predictions, the mHealth industry by 2017 will reach $26 billion.

In the industry where information is essential and suggestions by external partners are so crucial, the appeal is obviously clear. Even, the paper alerts pharma not to fully depend on mobile technologies to get desired outcomes. With the help of these devices to enhance medical education along with patient adherence, businesses can better place themselves to take advantage of mHealth in the future. Nowadays, a lot more consumers rely on the internet, usually through their smartphones, than in the past to get medical information. Whereas text message campaigns don't need smart phones, but to access the internet it does requires. The global penetration for mobile broadband is 32% just the double what it had been in the year 2011. In Europe, it is 64% which is the highest penetration rate, when compared to North & South America together it is just 59%. The broadband speed also must be considered, as it can vary across geographic areas because it differs around geographic locations.

While smartphones along with tablets are increasing all over the world, companies have turned to mHealth development services in order to improve interaction with the patients. Uses to cover anything from text messages to the remind patients for having medicines to even more interactive systems which could coordinate, for instance, a glucose meter by using a mobile app for the diabetes patients.

There could be unwillingness from Big Pharma getting involved in new technologies, particularly when they're not sure with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s position. The FDA has reviewed mHealth technologies and also the level that it may need to regulate them. What sort of mobile apps could be subject to regulatory oversight had been specified in the Safety and Innovation Act of 2012, whereas final guidance given during September 2013 highlighted the FDA will focus its concern upon medical mobile devices. As a whole, the FDA promises to work out its regulatory oversight upon mobile applications which either function in connection using a separate medical device otherwise change a current mobile platform, for instance tablet, Android, an iPhone and more, to the regulated medical device, reports the paper. Actually, in cases where a mobile app has got the potential to have an effect on patient safety for the better or even for worse, then the FDA wants to examine it. Some other mobile initiatives would be examined on the case by case basis.

Although mHealth is really an approach for pharma companies in order to develop themselves to patient-centric, unanswered concerns in the regulatory end might still result in a few companies to be reluctant. Despite having guidance in place, it is not possible to make sure how the FDA is going to impose its final judgment. The acceptance from the FDA during January 2015 associated with a number of mobile medical apps might give some knowledge. In the decision, the FDA regarded the risk posed from the system as “low to moderate.” It is likely to reduce concerns and motivate the development of even more mobile apps. Even so, companies must not move to the mHealth development services without having complete knowledge what they really want from an app.

Powered by 10+ years of mobile healthcare expertise, Mindfire creates custom mHealth apps for providers, patients & healthcare ISVs enabling exceptional results in healthcare quality, effectiveness, and accessibility. If you are in need of developing mHealth application software, mail your requirements to sales at Mindfire Solutions dot com to let us help you in your endeavor.

Why doctors are unhappy with their EHRs?

An EHR is actually a digital collection of a patient's health records created in one or more consultations in every care delivery system. Many physicians are not happy with their electronic health records. The top EHR vendors are improving various areas of their products’ workflow, usability, UI, load and response times along with the other features that are built to enhance both the user experience and the productivity. However, do the physicians, specialists, and nurses really utilize the EHR any longer than they used to do 5 years ago? Based on a latest study done by the American Medical Association (AMA) along with AmericanEHR Partners, only 34% of doctors stated that they have been pleased or very pleased with their electronic health record in 2014, as compared to 62% in the year 2010.

The study results states that 42% of the doctors believe that their electronic health records capability to enhance efficiency had been challenging to very challenging, 72% think that their electronic health record hardly made any difference to reduce their workload, 54% stated that their electronic health record raised the operating expenses, 43% reported that they had not got over with the workflow challenges regarding their electronic health record. To be eligible for meaningful use incentives, doctors are required to follow given workflows that are not really efficient. Probably users were pleased 5 years back prior to the arrival of the more difficult Stage 2 needs.

Many EHRs usually are not as attractive, intuitive and simple to navigate just as widely used websites such as Facebook & Amazon or even a lot of smartphone applications. Also the many tech-adverse medical professionals are quite used to the slicker interfaces which are traditional with mainstream applications. It could then be one of the reasons why they become annoyed by the EHR's relative clumsiness. Many of the EHRs are very pricey to use and maintain. Doctors usually complain about EHRs being ineffective, affecting the provider-patient relationship and also failing to minimize workflow. In spite of MU incentives, lots of physicians are still not able to have a positive ROI.

The study even explained a direct connection with physician satisfaction along a period of time a doctor utilized the EHR. Like for example, amongst the doctors who have been inducted into the system for 3 years or less, merely 25% claimed some amount of satisfaction. The amount of satisfaction rose to 50% in doctors who have made use of their EHR for 5 or more years. During the last 5 years, adoption of EHR has risen rapidly and also developed a significant growth of new EHR users. Since practices are moving towards digital world today, workflow usually decreases since physicians find it difficult to understand new software and also adapt workflows. Because of the difficulties in using an EHR, it is hardly unusual that early on users were not so satisfied. But if experienced users are usually more satisfied, it appears fair to believe that we are going to notice satisfaction ratings rise in the years to come.

Then again the concern of whether we should worry about physicians not being satisfied with their EHRs. Michelle Ronan Noteboom, Contributing writer for many publications and health IT vendors, mentioned in one of her articles that she is at opinion that doctor satisfaction do matter, although not as much as enhancing the standard of patient care. Patient care is going to be improved once all the providers get access to detailed and accurate documentation. Usually, the records of patient from a provider may integrate with the records by some other provider to make one longitudinal record which is easy to understand and gives a complete picture associated with patient's health history.

Certainly we're nowhere near to getting that goal however the chart notes which the physicians are usually generating in the EHRs these days are giving the foundations for the single, interoperable patient record. Doctors might reason that their usage of EHR has been doing very little to enhance patient care yet such point of view can be a little narrow-minded. Will it matter when physicians don't like their EHRs? Must we make an effort to identify the types of their unhappiness with EHRs and do everything possible which will make physicians happier? Otherwise must we direct your attention towards the patient and devote ourselves in doing whatever it requires getting the aim of the single, interoperable patient record which improves the care quality?

With 10+ years' of demonstrated experience in developing customized, robust and secure software solutions for physicians, healthcare ISVs, hospitals & provider networks in the US and Canadian Health IT industries, Mindfire Solutions has to be your ideal development partner for Healthcare Software development.

The Explosive Growth of Mobile Healthcare

Mobile healthcare is well poised to effectively flourish procedure for patient care and bring long term growth for the companies in the healthcare industry. Branch of e-health market which makes use of the mobile technology is primarily effective in medical evaluation from a distant location. As internet reach extends throughout the globe with the arrival of smart phones, growth outlook for mobile health care becomes more encouraging. It ensures sound treatment through early diagnosis and helps to regulate the compliance procedure during post treatment phase. Cost effectiveness is the main reason for its success. With emergence of smart phone, it became possible for everyone to access the service regardless of the location. Instead of being stuck in long queue at hospital for patient admission, you are just one click away from getting the care you need at affordable rates.

With the rise equal to approximately seven Billion mobile network users across the globe, the mobile communications industry is increasingly attracting people from a varied demographic group. Healthcare is no different to this pattern. As medical care service provider is looking to widen their patient access with limiting costs, experts deem mobile healthcare as the mean to achieve service cost-effectiveness. Mobil medical care highlights the usage of mobile communications technology & devices like smartphones in making it easier for people far and wide to reach out to healthcare information and strengthen availability of daily emergency care services by performing medical evaluation. Companies in network communication business also consider mobile care as a profitable venture which could lead them to growth path in the long run.

Broadly speaking, aspects like software, services, sales and advertising could be improved to make it more viable in the current global economy. Health insurers also have not been able to offer affordable detailed coverage plan which could help boost the industry. Medical treatments being sensitive issue for many people, clarity would help to ascertain that the people rights are protected. More and more young people are getting interested to avail the mobile benefit being the primary user of the internet. Adjustments to general healthcare plans and flexible legal procedures would allow the companies to expand the reach even wider. Skills needed to implement are also not yet up to the mark and additional training is required to equip the people involved in the industry. Extensive marketing would also help to create the awareness. Lack of knowledge about the steps involved has also diminished the progress. No one company have been able to provide all the solutions triggering the need to do rigorous research and development. Because if the provider himself would be at odds regarding effectiveness of the service, how could they convince their target audience to make it part of their life.

Progress made in mobile technology has impacted nearly every functional department with in the industry. The puzzling calculations once required to calculate and evaluate complicated procedures, is just one click away. There is more to Mobile healthcare application development than just the access and availability of the smartphone. It could be a way to delegate healthcare and could alter the way we currently assume the process. In today’s world, companies have acknowledged the new wave of smartphone users and their part in generating revenues. Devices like tablets, smart phones can monitor your current state of health using data extracted in real time. However, this is just a small step towards ever changing mobile industry. Patients are concerned about whether the technology would help them monitor their healthcare in a more effective way or help medical professionals involved in making critical decisions.

Mindfire has deep experience developing Healthcare / Medical IT Software applications. Our solutions  are used in various hospitals and medical setups. We invite you to know more about the healthcare solutions that were developed at Mindfire Solutions to enable care delivery to become more integrated, outcome-based and patient-centric.

How can technology be used to improve patient engagement?

Interest among the patients is actually rising in monitoring their own health through electronic health records. In addition to that, the fast-growing movement of mobile health applications, as well as the wearable health data trackers, are definitely influencing people to obtain their own health care records, as a result, the demand for patient engagement solutions are rapidly increasing. Patient engagement solutions enable patients handle their Healthcare information and enable better interaction of medical team to the patients.

It is important to offer the required tools to actually engage in the management of their personal health. Effective access to Healthcare providers and the personal Healthcare information enable patients in better self-care. Affordable Healthcare, grown patient outreach, reduced complications, reduced hospital readmission levels, fewer hospitalization periods, as well as a better quality of Healthcare are a some of the advantages includes in patient engagement. The process shares information and also interaction to assist the patient as well as enhance workflow efficiencies. In addition, it reduces administrative expenses. Patient engagement solutions improve patient and provider interaction and maintain both patient and the care team updated on the personal health data. Health care providers should enhance quality and the efficiency through some resources by using the solution. Patient engagement helps doctors to provide an even better diagnosis and much more coordinated care through tracking information for the patients' health and even enables the sharing of a medical overview to care teams.

Many tools are around these days for helping the patient effectively self-manage as well as the provider in better track, train, act and also to communicate to patients. In fact, patients can make use of a number of mobile applications to keep track of their dietary, exercise as well as weight, all in order to make their health better. After the physicians get access to such data, they could give patients with more context or intervene through a number of measures which help progress the patient to improved health. While Healthcare experts are getting actionable information and offering comments about real-time information, the associated patient gets regular insights for their health, in such a way they may understand, allowing them for taking action. This helps them to remain motivated, that is crucial. As a result, the patient moves by simply caring to get connected and sharing to get constantly engaged, and gets engaged in the process in order to obtaining most effective health results.

The global market is dominated by the North America for the patient engagement solutions because of growing chronic diseases, regulatory mandates by the Affordable Care Act, growing demand for quality care, increasing health care expenses, as well as the increase in geriatric population within the region. It is expected that Asia will come up with high progressive rates withing the next 5 years in the global patient engagement solutions sector. India and China are expected to become fastest developing markets within the Asia Pacific region. The main factor for the market in the developing nations include more number of patients, growing awareness on the diseases, increasing Healthcare costs, enhancing Healthcare infrastructure, growth in Healthcare information technology use, along with increase of medical tourism in these regions.

Getting patients engaged with new technology and the tools helps communication and helps them in their ailments along with the treatment solutions. Quality enhancements to physician and patient interactions result in better-informed patients and make them more engaged in their own care. Patient engagement improves physician and patient relationships and produces greater health results. Providers and the mHealth application developers are often trying to find innovative methods to enhance the tools they choose for the patient engagement purposes. Many patients these days are quite interested in making use of tablets to communicate with their care providers.

Mobile Health applications are the future of patient engagement. As the use of mobile devices increasing along with the growth of mHealth applications growing in numbers, patient engagement platforms have grown to be more accessible. The use of mobile devices for engagement tools to enhance physician and patient relationships, information can easily be shared to the patients by their care providers. To improve physician and patient relationships along with the care, providers need to make a note of emerging engagement ways. That should aim to improve security and improve the overall quality of patient interactions by using the technology. It is necessary for the care providers to ensure security and adhere privacy regulations at the time of using the patient engagement tools along with technology to share medical information.

At Mindfire Solutions, we have been providing custom Healthcare software development services to our esteemed clients for more than 11 years now. Our Healthcare team can help you with development of custom EMR, HER, PMS and CPOE development to name a few, or we can customize your existing products as per requirements. Please feel free to write to us in case of any custom Healthcare needs and we will revert back in one business day. You can also avail our limited period Risk-Free Trial offer.

Is the industry ready for ICD-10 implementation?

ICD is needed to regulate codes for the medical conditions and the procedures. While many nations around the world currently using the ICD-10, the USA has yet to embrace this established practice. As ICD-10 codes are much more precise compared to ICD-9, physicians can certainly fetch even more information, it simply means that they can better learn about crucial details regarding the patient’s health as compared to ICD-9-CM. Somewhere around 660 providers along with billing companies presented about 15,000 test claims. The effective testing consistently put on track for the effective implementation of the significant step that better demonstrates the modern practice of medicine by 1st of October 2015. Healthcare professionals use codes with the ICD in order to record the health conditions of their patients and also record in-patient hospital procedures.

The USA is the only major industrialized country yet to move to ICD-10. The system of ICD-9, that is over 35 years old, restricts a number of new codes which can be created, and several ICD-9 categories are full. Providers of ICD-10 room for the code expansion, so that providers could use codes even more accurately towards patient diagnoses. While the ICD-10 date for implementation draws near, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is expects the industry is ready for the major changes that it's going to experience because of the new coding system. It is very important that the providers are working with the resources available and also are providing required training to their staffs in order to successfully get the transition. When they are not prepared, their practices are going to be negatively affected while processing and filing claims.

In order to have health professionals updated on the time that they have prior to October 1, the CMS has started with a countdown on their website. Providers and the payers are left with a couple of months before they must change to the ICD-10 codes. Professionals in healthcare may already know the numbers of days exactly remaining to the deadline, however, many are still not as ready as they ought to be to ensure a smooth transition. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has offered many online resources such as the Road to 10 guides. Having said that, a current survey done by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) indicated that just 25% of providers are ready, which indicates that such resources have perhaps turned out to be unhelpful or maybe haven't been used as much as they should.

Healthcare industry is starting to show concern since the implementation date gets closer, as per a study by CNBC. Small practices particularly are increasingly becoming concerned. EHR Intelligence pointed out that though there is presently so much fear growing within the healthcare industry, providers need to target on the good aspects about the new coding system that offers. For instance, it's going to enhance diagnostic codes and remove the ones that are not relevant, finally improving the entire care standard. To less than 3 months left before the state changes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding, CMS and the American Medical Association (AMA) declared more efforts in helping physicians to get prepared before the October 1 deadline. CMS is offering more assistance that will provide freedom in the claims auditing as well as quality reporting process since the medical community gets experience with the new ICD- 10 code set.

It is undeniable that the transitioning from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will certainly increase the number of codes from 17,000 to 140,000. This clear growth draws attentions to necessity for the providers to effectively train their practice, and it also indicates the way this new detailed data will be helpful to the physicians while effectively diagnosing their patients. As stated in the Journal of AHIMA, providers and the payers shouldn't expect for yet another ICD-10 delay, as the United States House of Representatives have recently passed the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) bill on a vote of 392 to 37 while not stating anything regarding a delay.

Realizing that providers of health care need help in the transition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the American Medical Association are trying to make certain that the physicians along with other providers are prepared prior to the transition to ICD-10 which will occur on October 1. Contacting the providers of health care all over the nation, both CMS and AMA will train providers through on-site training, educational articles, webinars and national provider calls that will help doctors along with other healthcare providers find out about the updated codes as well as get ready for the transition.

At Mindfire Solutions, we have been providing custom healthcare application development services to our esteemed clients for more than 11 years now. Our healthcare team can help you migrate from ICD 9 to ICD 10. Please feel free to write to us in case of any custom healthcare needs and we will revert back in one business day.

10 things to consider before developing your healthcare software

Data security: While developing health care software it is the primary concern for the developer to keep the data secure in the database. For the same, you can implement high degree of security in the back end programming to make the data extremely safe and secure for your client. Software developers can implement 256 bit encryption technology to keep the data extremely secure.

Data consistency: Health care software is usually aimed to serve a big organisation like hospital or medical in which there are lots of infrastructural and divisional differences in the organisation. To provide a common information data all around the divisions and infrastructures it is necessary to maintain the data consistency so that any bills can be generated from anywhere without any differences.

Data isolation: Many times we need to keep our data isolated from the rest of the world. This improves the quality of service as well as helps in maintaining privacy of our users. So a software developer must ensure the same through his application.

Proper flow: While developing any software application, it is the duty of the software developer to maintain a proper flow among the modules. If you are developing a web application then also you need to follow a certain approach. This flow is extremely vital for the success of the application and it must be taken care from the very beginning of the development process.

Credential is must: While dealing with health care application we usually find many stages of users for the application like admin, HOD, Chief data entry operator etc. In that situation, we must maintain a proper screening among the departments. For the same we should integrate credential system into the application so that there will be no data leakage in the application.

Database should be optimized: As a good software developer, you must ensure all your database related queries are not only optimized but also efficiently handled. We should avoid duplicate queries to improve the throughput of the application.

Added feature is a big plus: In 21^st century, we are in a competitive environment and hence, to sustain in the market, we have to provide some additional features in our application. For the same, we can analyse the strength of our competitors and accordingly we should prepare a better battle to lunch our application with added features.

Integration of SMS service is better: SMS service is a boon for 21^st century industry and we must take the advantage of the same for our application. With SMS integration, we can connect with more number of users and able to provide them better services than before. On the other hand, users will feel privileged too.

Integration of health devices: There are many heath devices that are in the news recently like apple’s watch or android watch. If we can integrate these devices to our application, then we can help our users more practically in providing better and in-time services.

Instant support matters: Yes, this matters a lot!! If through our application, we can provide instant support to any user, then it will definitely get more popularity and faith of the users in low time. So we must take care for the same.

For the last 10+ years Mindfire solutions has been highly successful in developing secure, easy-to-use and robust Healthcare Software Solutions. Our strong software engineering capability coupled by an in-depth understanding of the healthcare industry has enabled us to build solutions which are interoperable and comply with all the required regulatory mandates (e.g. MU, ICD-10, etc.). If you are planning to hire a healthcare software development company for your healthcare projects, please contact Mindfire solutions.

mHealth and its importance in future

mHealth a modern era futuristic way to provide industry standard health services to each and everyone. It is affordable yet effective!! If we say, “mHealth is the messenger of God”, probably we are not mistaking!!

Health is wealth and we should careful for our health. For better health we have to rely on better health care services. mHealth is a modern era health care services provided to the patients through mobile devices like mobiles, smart phones, tablets etc. In fact m stands for mobile. The aim of mHealth is to provide better and in time health services to the patients from a remote place. It has already received a fabulous response in developed countries in past few years and experts believe that it will get similar response in developing countries like India, China etc in recent future. Let us discuss some of the important aspect of mHealth for the users.

For educating people for their health: In developing country like India the major part of the population live in villages where there is very less scope to educate people for different diseases and health tips. As a result, due to unawareness, people live like blind and socially illiterate in remote places. With mHealth service we can educate them through different health tips in the form of SMS service to their mobile. We can make them aware of new diseases, threads and epidemics in advance so that they can take preventive measures for their health.

Training for healthcare professionals from a remote place: Though India a country of 1.3 billion populations, still there is an unbelievable number of health care service providers or professionals in the country. The ratio between the health care professional to that of patients is extremely low. To add this they are neither up to date nor highly qualified. As a result the health care service is becoming terrific with time. To avoid this, mHealth can be used to train the health care professionals with modern approach to make them more efficient than before. It can be done from any remote place on the globe and from qualified and expert professionals. This will definitely improve the quality of service to the patients in indirect way.

Reaching at everyone: Mobiles are now with every hands in India irrespective of geographic changes. To get the maximum advantage of this situation we must ensure that the mHealth service is reaching to each and every corner of the country. This will definitely help poor peoples to avail better health care service through mHealth technology.

Providing better patient service: Through mHealth we can perform different operations like collecting patient information, taking an appointment for a doctor, providing tele medicines etc. This will definitely improve the quality of health care service in the country. On the other hand patient will get immediate service from a remote place that can save a life. Moreover doctors can monitor their patients from a remote place and hence able to provide better and advanced service to them.

Emergency assistance: Emergency situations like epidemic, outbreak or accidental case, mHealth can help you in a superfast way so that you may think as if it is a blessing from god. So if we say mHealth is a virtual version of messenger of god, it will not be an over statement.

You can hire developers from healthcare IT development companies in India who can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide Medical Software Development services. If you want to hire healthcare software developers for developing your medical application, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.