Anthem VP discusses how to produce a successful mobile health care app
John Jesser, vice president for provider engagement strategy at health insurer Anthem, was at the 2015 American Telemedicine Association conference. During the event, he shared his thoughts on how the medical industry can improve upon producing health care mobile apps that consumers will actually use.
“The challenge is the app has to have functionality that people will use,” stated Jesser.
From consumer portals to mobile apps
It was not all that long ago that the closest thing to mobile health was consumer portals on medical websites. And even so, these were not as effective.
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According to Jesser, most patients only visited a health care portal if there was something to be gained—such as a weight watching application where they could input their daily meals or track their goals.
“The top two reasons people used health consumer portals were to renew a prescription or to schedule a visit with a doctor,” said Jesser. “Those are two very functional things that everybody needs to do.”
The rise of mobile adoption
“The fact that you can now have a doctor in your pocket and available 24 hours a day and [visit with them] on a mobile device, smartphone or tablet, suddenly is driving mobile adoption,” said Jesser.
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The problem with this is that there are now a large number of mobile apps being produced—leaving patients overwhelmed and confused with which to use. If your medical practice is also producing its own health app, you’re left in a field of hyper competition.
So what will set your mobile health app apart?
“The winners will be those who come up with a simple, effective [and] functional thing that people really want to do,” said Jessen. “Having one place—some simple, one-click solutions—those are the things that are going to drive people to use it.”
For the full discussion, watch the video below.
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