By Aaron Kaufman, general manager and vice president of healthcare and life sciences, Kony Health
Aaron Kaufman
The mobile healthcare industry has grown rapidly over the past year, leading analysts to tout further expansion of the industry in 2011. With opportunities across the entire vertical for payers, providers and patients, mobile healthcare is predicted to bring in more than $4.6 billion in revenue by 2014.
During this period of rapid development, one of the major obstacles facing the widespread adoption of mHealth offerings is the fragmentation of the mobile market. As healthcare organizations inherently serve a variety of customers from many backgrounds, not every customer will be using the most popular device available. With so much buzz surrounding the iPhone, many businesses continue to focus their mobile strategy resources solely on this much hyped platform. But, with a Gartner report estimating that the iPhone holds just 2.7% of the mobile market share, businesses who put all of their eggs in the iPhone basket stand to lose more than 97% of mobile customers.
For mHealth offerings to be truly effective, healthcare organizations must plan now to create a mobile portfolio across all devices and operating systems. More importantly, in order to more fully connect with a customer using a branded mobile offering, each mHealth application must take advantage of native device capabilities. This allows customers to leverage the functionalities on their desired device, heightening their user experience and deepening their connection to the brand.
Planning a Long-Term Mobile Strategy
Healthcare providers must think long-term when planning for mobile, looking beyond the most popular device today (regardless of if it is a BlackBerry, iOS or Android powered device). An offering should target all of the key OSs available on the market in order to reach the most consumers. While healthcare providers mistakenly select the iPhone as a way to connect with the most consumers, an organization can actually capture more market share by designing a mobile offering that targets the more than 8,500 mobile devices and nine operating systems available.
Ignoring any of these devices or channels can only mean one thing – a missed opportunity to connect with customers.
Another issue that healthcare organizations have to consider is that many of their clients may not even have smartphones. Especially for elder care organizations, the makeup of a company’s target audience may also dictate the type of mobile offering provided – for example, an SMS campaign for feature phones that provides health check updates or medication reminders could be more effective and gain higher adoption than a mobile website or app. Healthcare organization must also consider how their audience wants to interact with them. Creating a multi-channel strategy gives an organzation’s target audience the choice of interacting with the brand – providing access to on-the-go healthcare information and tools where they already are, and whenever they want it.
Ready, Set, Execute: Getting a Mobile Healthcare Strategy to Market Now
One of the “mobile headaches” of developing an integrated mobile offering that reaches a variety of devices and channels is the cost associated with developing for each individual operating system and channel. A smart, fully integrated mobile strategy will leverage technology such as a single application definition to create a single code base from which all of a company’s mHealth applications are built.
Using a platform with a single application definition allows all of your healthcare organization’s applications to be designed and developed just once, in a device independent manner, and deployed across multiple channels, including on-device applications, mobile web, SMS, web gadgets, desktop applications, and tablets. This single code base also represents the most cost effective way to meet the largest number of consumers, helping your organization avoid the costs associated with developing a mobile offering for each device or operating system individually.
It’s important to also consider how each device’s native functionality can be used to a company’s advantage – giving a customer the chance to use functions they are already familiar with on their device to interact with your company. For example, a provider could create an ePrescription app from a single code base, yet deploy on all of today’s major devices. An iPhone user and an Android user would experience the same, feature-rich application on both devices. This kind of personalized experience provides customers with a more intimate experience with a healthcare brand, aiding in customer retention.
This powerful technology is truly the only solution available that offers ubiquitous deployment of mobile offerings across the entire mobile landscape. The single application definition also optimizes a company’s mobile budget and offers the most significant return on investment by reducing ongoing maintenance, upgrade and development costs without sacrificing functionality or reach.
Future Proofing: The Way for Healthcare Organizations to Get Ahead of the Mobile Game
While healthcare organizations may already be overwhelmed by the sheer number of mobile operating systems and devices available to consumers, the industry is by no means slowing down. Instead, the mobile landscape only continues to become more and more fragmented, with different iterations of each OS, and additional native device functionalities to plan for – from the iPad’s dual cameras to the Google Wallet.
Healthcare organizations, strapped by tight budgets, may find it difficult to create a strategy that encompasses today’s devices, much less those already in the pipeline. As such, it is imperative that organizations incorporate future-proofing technology into a mobile offering from the get go. This ensures fast adoption of new operating systems and standards as they are introduced – while also eliminating maintenance, upgrade and future development costs. Technologies such as HTML5, as they become more viable, can thus be integrated into exisiting mobile offerings without having to be re-developed from scratch.
Planning for 2011
In a rapidly changing healthcare market, it’s more important than ever to stay connected with customers. Providing reminders of value via mobile is one more critical way to retain customers in a highly competitive industry. And, with mobile apps and websites gaining popularity across a number of industries, the healthcare industry will soon find that a mobile offering across all devices is table stakes. With 31% of consumers interested in mobile offerings to track and monitor their personal health information, companies without a mHealth offering will find themselves out of touch with customers, and behind the competition.
