Today, our world is very technology-reliant. We can observe how all kinds of innovations are being integrated into all spheres of our lives. And healthcare is not an exception. Fast technological progress, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, are forcing care providers to adopt various digital channels to let patients receive more personalized and convenient services in any setting.
One of the biggest recent tech trends in the medical industry is the integration of patient engagement platforms. What are these? How do they help? And what to look for in such platforms? Read on to find the answers!
Patient Engagement Platform: Definition
In a nutshell, a patient engagement platform (PEP) is a piece of software designed for medical facilities. This software enables patients to stay in touch and interact with their healthcare providers remotely, for example, via their smartphones, computers, or tablets.
How do medical facilities integrate PEP? In recent years, and especially during the pandemic, thousands of hospitals are leveraging the vast expertise of custom logistics software development companies to deliver better and more meaningful experiences. And the reasons why medical facilities opt for custom software solution services are pretty obvious.
Patient Engagement Platform: Integration
In most cases, these facilities don’t have an in-house development team. Thus, they opt for custom software services from third-party vendors. This is the only way for them to integrate innovative solutions such as PEP. And the significance of such applications is growing. So, it is clear that all healthcare providers should integrate them.
Another reason to stick with a custom built software solution is that it’s tailor-made. By requesting help from a specialized custom software development company, hospitals can get more personalized applications. Meaning they will be tailored to their customers’ needs. As a result, they get a chance to deliver better experiences.
Patient Engagement Platform: Benefits
Okay, now what are the benefits of integrating a patient engagement platform? In fact, there are quite a few perks. Namely, a well-build PEP can:
Streamline everyday processes, such as appointment setting, medical records keeping, self-scheduling, etc.
Help foster trust through delivering more personalized experiences.
Keep customers informed on their own health status, treatment, and key decisions.
Educate people on different health issues.
Let patients communicate with their healthcare providers remotely. They can ask questions, make appointments, share concerns, take part in decision-making, etc.
What to Look for in a Patient Engagement Platform?
It doesn’t matter if you are opting for a custom solution or off-the-shelf software. The key goal is to find a solution that would meet both care providers’ and patients’ needs. To meet this goal, medical facilities should be looking for the following key features in their engagement platforms:
Simple Onboarding
Firstly, every PEP should have a simple onboarding feature. The core goal of this feature is to help users to register and start receiving services quickly and easily.
A well-thought-through onboarding process is what makes such portals easy to use. This feature can help medical facilities gain the trust and loyalty of their customers. And it can also help them stand out from the competition.
Regardless of whether you are seeking commercial or tailor-made software, simple onboarding is one of the first things you should be looking for.
Integration With EMR
To provide health services digitally, every PEP should be integrated with EMR. So, this is another core feature to look for in such platforms.
Why integrate Electronic Medical Records (EMR)? This feature enables medical facilities to store and manage their customers’ information with ease. At the same time, EMR integration has benefits for patients too. It allows them to check history, current status, and other treatment details.
This feature is vital for keeping customers well informed and letting them take part in the decision-making process.
Real-Time Communication
Another key feature to look for in every PEP is real-time communication. Such platforms enable patients to stay in touch with their healthcare providers. Thus, the ease of communication should be at the core. And it also has to be convenient and interactive.
How to ensure convenient real-time communication? There are many options. Yet, integrating text-based messaging into the system is the most common option.
What else to keep in mind? The communication should also be bidirectional. This is important to ensure that both a customer and a care provider can get in touch with each other whenever necessary.
Multilingual Support
There is no secret that we are living in an extremely diversified world. In every country, there is a blend of cultures. This basically means that not all patients who may need to use your PEP can speak English. Thus, to cater to their needs, you may want your platform to support different languages.
How do you get things right? Ideally, medical facilities should analyze their existing customers. A thorough analysis will help define what languages they use. Based on this data, they should be able to provide multilingual support in languages that are spoken most commonly by their patients.
Chatbot and Keywords Support
Since we all are striving for automation these days, it is crucial that apart from real-time communication, your PEP would also have chatbot functionality. There are several reasons for that.
First of all, a chatbot feature helps minimize human intervention and, thus, can save your team lots of time. Secondly, it also enables immediate automated responses to your patients’ most common questions that don’t require a real-life support representative to answer.
As for keywords, they also play a crucial role in automation. With the help of a chatbot and enabled keywords, medical facilities can let their patients perform a variety of actions automatically. For example, they can schedule an appointment by simply using the right keyword.
Sentiment Analysis
One of the biggest benefits of PEPs is that such software enables healthcare providers to interact with and track their patients’ conditions even when they are beyond the hospital’s walls.
This enables doctors to start understanding their clients on a deeper emotional level, know when they are feeling depressed, frustrated, or happy, and respond accordingly. If you want to make the most of this opportunity, then one more feature you should be looking for in your PEP is sentiment analysis.
This feature is designed to track and analyze the emotional condition of users. And it is an absolute must-have.
Integration With Other Vendors
Finally, in order to deliver a truly great and well-rounded experience, medical facilities should also ensure that their patient engagement platforms are integrating with other vendors. For example, you can seek integration with invoice management, medical billing software, etc.
All in all, integration with other vendors will enable you to expand the functionality of your PEP and ensure better user experiences.
The Bottom Line
The ongoing pandemic restricts face-to-face interaction. Due to this reason, the healthcare industry now needs the right tech solutions more than ever before. And patient engagement platforms are among the best solutions available today.
As you now know, PEPs have many benefits. They streamline the workflow, boost trust, and let patients stay informed and engaged. Thus, integrating such solutions is no longer an option but rather a necessity.
Luckily, after reading this article, you know where to look for such solutions and what must-have features to include.
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