Lessons learned from the development of health applications in a tertiary hospital

Abstract

Background: Adoption of smart devices for hospital use has been increasing with the development of health applications (apps) for patient point-of-care and hospital management. To promote the use of health apps, we describe the lessons learned from developing 12 health apps in the largest tertiary hospital in Korea.

Materials and methods: We reviewed and analyzed 12 routinely used apps in three categories-Smart Clinic, Smart Patient, and Smart Hospital-based on target users and functions. The log data for each app were collected from the date of release up until December 2012.

Results: Medical personnel accessed a mobile electronic medical record app classified as Smart Clinic an average of 452 times per day. Smart Hospital apps are actively used to communicate with each other. Patients logged on to a mobile personal health record app categorized as Smart Patient an average of 222 times per day. As the mobile trend, the choice of supporting operating system (OS) is more difficult. By developing these apps, a monitoring system is needed for evaluation.

Conclusions: We described the lessons learned regarding OS support, device choice, and developmental strategy. The OS can be chosen according to market share or hospital strategic plan. Smartphones were favored compared with tablets. Alliance with an information technology company can be the best way to develop apps. Health apps designed for smart devices can be used to improve healthcare. However, to develop health apps, hospitals must define their future goals and carefully consider all the aspects.

Fig. 1.

Categories of smart health applications (apps) at Asan Medical Center. The app names and their purpose and category are shown. Smart Clinic includes apps for effective clinical practice, Smart Patients includes apps for self-monitoring or self-care, and Smart Hospital includes apps for communication or knowledge sharing between hospital employees. An app can be included in more than one category if it has multiple functions. mAMIS, mobile Asan Medical Information System.

Fig. 2.

Deployment of platform and technological architecture in Asan Medical Center (AMC) health applications (apps). OS, operating system; PHR, personal health record; DMZ, demilitarized zone; TCP/IP, transmission control protocol/Internet protocol.

Fig. 3.

Screenshots of the mobile Asan Medical Information System application: (A) basic patient information, (B) lab results, (C) electronic medical record viewer, and (D) picture archiving and communication system image.

Fig. 4.

Popular services in the mobile Asan Medical Information System application. The number of times each menu in the mobile Asan Medical Information System was accessed is shown. The most frequently used service was basic patient information, followed by prescriptions and lab results. ER, emergency room; OP, operating room; PACS, picture archiving and communication system.

Fig. 5.

Screenshots of My Chart in My Hand: (left) the home screen, (middle) basic lab results, and (right) drug information. It currently supports only the Korean language. My Chart in My Hand can be downloaded at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amc.mphr.mphrui

Fig. 6.

Trends in the number of logins. The graph shows the number of logins to My Chart in My Hand from its launch in January 2011 up until December 2012. The trend line shows that the number of logins is steadily increasing.

Fig. 7.

The number of times each service of My Chart in My Hand was accessed. The number of accesses for each service within My Chart in My Hand from its launch up until December 2012 is displayed. Because there are no log data for the “Health information” menu, the graph does not show how many times it was accessed.

Fig. 8.

Screenshots of AsaniN: (left) home screen, (middle) a list of manuals or useful reports, and (right) the manuals downloaded from the list.