Doctors and nurses alike find hospital mobile software extremely helpful as they use it in their everyday work: from diagnosing to communicating with patients. Yet, the hospital staff aren’t the only ones who can benefit from specialized mobile apps. Inpatients can also find great practical use in mobile software if it targets their needs and ensures better treatment experience.
Since these needs are all quite diverse, addressing them with a single app can put user experience in danger: the app will turn out overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Instead, it’s worth going for a mobile software package that consists of several mobile apps.
Let’s look at what exactly these inpatient apps can offer in terms of functionality and why such a pack can become a must-have for your hospital.
Nurse call app
Calling for a nurse is the most basic need of all inpatients. When installed on a hospital’s tablet, a mobile nurse call app can replace a simple buzzer system and streamline communication between a patient and a nurse.
A nurse call app provides a patient with a list of customized requests: a glass of water, hygiene assistance, etc. By receiving such an already specified request on their app end, a nurse doesn’t have to spend time on getting more details from a patient (as it often is with a simple buzzer) and will be able to start fulfilling the request at once.
The app also has an ‘urgent’ call button for cases of a suddenly worsened medical condition. Such calls acquire the priority status at the receiving end, allowing a nurse to pay attention to them first. If a patient is connected to a healthcare monitoring system, the urgent call notification will also display the latest vitals to help a nurse immediately catch up with the situation.
Planning and scheduling app
A planner app is a patient’s electronic organizer that contains their treatment, medication, and nutrition plans. A patient can freely view any of these plans, yet editing them is only allowed to the authorized hospital staff. The app also features an individual daily schedule with customizable reminders that help a patient never miss a treatment session, a doctor appointment or a medical test.
Along with the medical events, the daily schedule table has mealtime boxes. By clicking on any of these boxes, a patient opens an additional ‘meals’ menu where they can choose a specific set of food for a specific mealtime. The menu automatically analyzes the data in a user’s nutrition plan and disables any incompatible meal, showing only compatible meal sets. Thus, an inpatient is safe to make their choice.
Information app
An information app contains various important data an inpatient may want or need to know. It features the information menus with the history and staff list of the hospital a patient stays in. The staff list menu provides access to the official schedule and allows a patient to view the healthcare professionals who are available at the moment.
For patients to easily get their bearings in the hospital, the app can also offer a map of the facility. The map can be as simple as a blueprint or as elaborate as a 3D interactive model. Moreover, it can take advantage of beacon technology to detect locations down to a meter.
A hospital can also add a ‘satisfaction survey’ to this app and ask patients to fill it in whenever they see fit. This survey will help to collect data about what a hospital still needs to work on in order to improve the quality of their patients’ stays.
Room control app
For the inpatients, who have to stay in the hospital for quite a long time, it’s especially necessary to feel comfortable in their room and be able to relax and rest; otherwise, their treatment and recovery processes are at risk to be stymied. Still, adjusting the room conditions to every patient’s individual needs can be an exhausting and time-consuming task for a patient attendant. Moreover, some patients can feel uneasy to bother someone with such requests for fear of appearing a nuisance.
Mobile inpatient software can feature an app that will allow patients to tweak the room controls to their liking. Integrated with the room control system, the app offers various room settings, including lighting, window shades, temperature, and ventilation. By tuning these settings, patients can find their comfort without having to ask for anyone’s assistance.
Leisure apps
In the absence of regular check-ups or during prolonged treatment sessions, patients can easily get bored. Gradually, this boredom may escalate to stress and become a tangible obstacle to the treatment process. That’s why making sure that patients have leisure options isn’t just a whim or luxury, but rather a necessity.
Leisure apps can include various types of media entertainment, such as TV, radio, and audiobooks. Standalone branded apps can also be installed to allow patients to browse the Internet and use their social media accounts. The more options patients have to entertain themselves with, the better they feel during their hospital stay.
Wrapping up
Hospital apps for patients can introduce benefits to both healthcare professionals and inpatients. The software package that we’ve described establishes swift communication between a patient and hospital staff well as keeps patients informed and updated in regards to their treatment and nutrition. Moreover, these mobile apps provide patients with a possibility to fine-tune their room condition and stay entertained.
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