With the digitization of healthcare, mobile applications have been transformed and used by the health insurance sector. Today, it is indispensable for an insurance company to have a mobile app to meet the expectations of tech-savvy millennials and compete with their rivals in the digital environment. Using a web or mobile healthcare app makes healthcare facilities easily accessible and saves precious time for the medical fraternity, especially doctors and patients. Health insurance apps are a great tool for leveraging collective insights to help make better decisions. It also provides real-time output to increase business efficiency and profit.
Why create a health insurance app?
With the proliferation of an aging population in the U.S., healthcare industry revenues are expected to grow. With the outbreak of the pandemic, most healthcare companies are prepared to cover expenses associated with testing and treatment for COVID-19. The influx of patients with symptoms of COVID-19 will increase in the coming days and will eventually lead to an increase in spending related to the benefits of health insurance apps. It will have an impact on the profit margins of health insurance companies.
According to McKinsey, “Already worth $1.6 trillion, the private health insurance market is expected to double in revenue by 2025.” Top players in the market such as QuickCard, WellPoint Inc, United Health Group, DKV, Kaiser Permanente, etc. It believes that the key applications and end users of the global health insurance market include sickness insurance, health insurance, and income protection insurance. The major regions that will witness tremendous growth in the future are the US, Canada, the EU, China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Despite revenue growth, rising healthcare costs and new legislative mandates for minimum health loss ratios are putting more pressure on industry profits. In 2018, there were over 318,000 mobile health apps available to patients, according to Liquid-State, with around 200 new health apps being developed every day. This is a surprising number and is a testament to the fact that there has been a significant increase since the coronavirus pandemic.
There are several ambiguous points that arise in most people’s minds. Let’s dive deeper into them:
What is Healthcare Apps?
Health is a fundamental part of our survival. The pandemic somewhere has accelerated digital innovation in healthcare. Healthcare apps are simple application programs that offer business-initiated health-related services. These apps have proven to be a major shift toward healthcare.
What are the benefits of health apps?
With the help of frequent questions, the mobile application makes it possible to detect and evaluate the symptoms of the disease. The app is the best means of monitoring your own health and quickly alerting medical professionals. Embedded or plug-in sensors, devices, and participant-based reporting can be used for monitoring. Remote monitoring of disease symptoms appears to be a very useful and promising part of the health care system, especially considering its benefits in the treatment of at-risk populations or patients with life-threatening diseases that require continuous monitoring.
To increase their business profit, medical and health insurance companies need to create robust, secure, intuitive, and user-friendly applications that will attract maximum clients and be profitable. Generally, people using the best health insurance app, especially during the pandemic, are impatient and want an immediate response and help regarding their insurance notification query. Large health insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group, Anthem, Humana Group, Aetna, etc. are benefiting from using a health insurance app, ranging from legacy health care management system upgrades to advanced health features for future-ready solutions.
Also Read: How Allstate Mobile App Revolutionize The Market (App of the Week)
Challenges facing the health insurance sector
Health insurance is a lucrative industry, but private insurance companies that still follow a traditional approach to dealing with their clients face some challenges. People are adopting digital platforms for all their daily activities and prefer smart and fast solutions even for health-related needs. Today, patients are desperately turning to health insurance apps because all information, from doctors to the best insurance plan, etc., is just a click away. Some of the problems faced by health insurance applications are as follows:
- Excessive use of paper
- Long queues for appointments
- Waste of time to use politics
- It is difficult to choose the best suitable policy
- A disorganized healthcare system
- It’s hard to find the best doctor
So when you plan to switch to the best health insurance apps, you need to provide solutions for all the above challenges so that the end users can easily manage them with just a few taps. The developer’s goal should be to create an intuitive, secure, feature-rich and user-friendly application that will benefit the insurer by attracting maximum loyal clients for business benefits.
Features of the health insurance app
If you want to gain a competitive edge over your business competitors, it is essential to move from traditional methods to a digital platform to attract your patients. Here is a list of essential features that your health insurance app must have in order to become the most preferred app for your patients and recommended by doctors as well.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of health insurance apps for patients and companies serving the healthcare sector:
1. Offer suitable plans
To start your client’s journey, the first step is to offer them a variety of good options so that they can choose the most suitable plan according to their needs. A well-designed app makes it easy for users to choose. For example, by providing users with a short questionnaire or form to obtain basic information, the most suitable plan can be offered according to their needs.
2. Purchase or Renewal Policy
Everyone wants to make the best decision and your app should act as a platform for that. The real benefit of a health insurance app is that users can identify and purchase their perfect policy. Sometimes people need to buy insurance for another qualifying life event, such as the birth or death of a family member. The traditional approach to buying or renewing a policy has always been time-consuming and demanding. A good application works as an aid in deciding their most suitable plan in a short period of time.
3. Easy payment options
Sometimes clients forget to make their monthly or annual payments and can end up with high fees later. One of the main benefits of using a digital application is offering automatic payment options to clients, so neither the client nor the insurance company faces any penalties for late payments. A secure payment gateway can be integrated into the application for automatic payment from the client to the health insurance app provider, monthly or annually, as per requirement. This eliminates the fear of losing insurance coverage, as there will be no delay in payments. By integrating with a payment gateway, patients can also conveniently pay their doctor’s bills immediately after ordering.
4. Finding the best doctors
Users can get a complete list of specialist doctors to choose from according to their ailment. Various filters can be added to help users search for doctors in a specific area, or specific diseases, or simply search for a doctor by name. Sometimes the app can also provide a team of gatekeepers who analyze symptoms and refer patients to specialists accordingly.
5. Booking an appointment
This feature plays a key role in attracting many users to your health insurance app as they can visit doctors as per their scheduled appointment and save a lot of time waiting in queues. A user-friendly calendar with easy navigation can help users book an appointment based on date and time slot availability.
6. Look for drugs
Health insurance companies can partner with pharmacies so patients can find the nearest pharmacy where their prescription drug is available. Clients can also be provided with the delivery of medicines right at their fingertips.
7. Symptom control
This feature has been widely used in medical applications but has now become essential with the coronavirus outbreak. A simple questionnaire or form can be used to ask about the patient’s health condition and, based on this, they can be directed to a specialist doctor. It will also help with pre-diagnosis and save the time of doctors and patients at the time of appointment.
8. Access to Documents
The health insurance application acts as a repository of all basic health documents related to the policy and laboratory reports. Instead of searching for papers in cabinets, the user can easily retrieve messages with a few taps on their phone. Users can share messages with their doctors through their phones when needed, without visiting them in person. The app should have strong encryption to keep the data completely secure.
9. Reminders
Sometimes patients forget about follow-up visits. By implementing push notifications, the app can remind them of their next visit to the doctor. Also, important claims processing dates, insurance expiry dates, and other important events are shared with users through timed push notifications.
10. Frequently asked questions
Sometimes people who use health insurance for the first time may have some doubts. The FAQ section allows users to clear their minds and make wise decisions by knowing more about different scenarios and insurance policies.
11. Support team
Patients and users purchasing or renewing health insurance policies should be able to speak with the support team to make an informed decision before making any investment. Support team members should be patient listeners and qualified to understand them and guide them in the best way.
To sum it up
The features we mentioned earlier in the Health Insurance App are essential to attract and build strong and long-term client relationships. A health insurance app development company in UK should also focus on medical regulatory guidelines so that they can be used for both public and private insurance. The sudden occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic has made people choose the best health insurance. It is certain that by creating a robust, secure, and user-friendly health insurance app, companies can reap lucrative business gains in the years to come.
