Enhance The Quality Of Medical Services By Using Mobile Applications

As China’s economy continues to grow, medical technology continues to improve; the health status and life expectancy of Chinese people also have been improving significantly during last two decades. However, with people’s growing demand for health services, China’s medical and health resources still cannot meet the need of the population. "Difficult to see a good doctor", and "High price for medical services" become the criticisms to medical service providers. In addition, with the increase of people’s income and higher expectations to medical services, the patients’habit in seeking medical services has also undergone some significant changes, for examples, "going to major medical centers for a minor illness ", " seeing a specialist doctor for a minor disease", or "seeing different doctors for the same simple disease", making it impossible for the already strained health resources to be allocated rationally.Most medical centers are always overcrowded. Overworked medical staffs struggle to see more patients by shortening the time of communication with patients. It is difficult to ensure high-quality hospital services.In the medical quality evaluation system, physician-patient communication is a key factor which is essential to establish mutual trust between physicians and patients, to the correct diagnosis and treatment. "Overload" causes medical staffs to reduce the time of communication with their patients. Reduction of communication between physician and patients often exacerbates tensions between two parts, and it even triggers the law suing from patients.The improvement of medical environment involves many aspects such as government investment, changing patients’habit of seeking medical attention, improvement the quality of the medical staffs, and the rational reallocation of medical and health resources. This process requires long-term efforts, and will not be "finished overnight". Although it is difficult to change the medical environment, we can make local improvement and make it better in medical service through our efforts.In recent years, smart phones and mobile Internet have developed rapidly. With the quick development of smart phones and mobile Internet, mobile Application software (Mobile App) have emerged dramatically, and become an integral part of life. They were found everywhere in daily life.In this study, we hope that through the developing of the medical App --"Mobile Huashan Hospital,(MHH)," we can provide additional health care services for our patients to make up for the lack of communication between doctors and patients, thereby improving patients’satisfaction with health care services. The objectives of this research were:(1) to demonstrate that physician-patient communication is a key factor affecting the quality of medical services, through analysis of the current status of the domestic medical services; (2) to explore the feasibility of developing medical apps, necessity, prospects, and its specificity through the analysis of the development of mobile Internet and App tendency; (3) to design main application modules and transmission of information in MHH, through the medical process analysis; and (4) to explore a sustainable development model of MHH in respect to profitability, patient safety, privacy protection, ethical issues, and to develop appropriate strategies and solutions accordingly.This study was conducted by survey for patients and medical experts, literature searching, and consultation to the information technology (IT) specialists and health policy-makers. Software modules were designed by comparison, learning and innovation process.The main results are as follows:(1) While China’s medical and health services has developed rapidly in the last two decades, the absolute or relative shortage medical resources, particularly those of high quality, is still a very prominent problem of the society. The long-term over-burdened operation of large hospitals (medical centers) has an adverse impact on effective communication between physicians and patients, causing the decrease of the quality of medical services, and even leading to the increase of medical disputes and law-suits; (2) In recent years, the increasing use of smart phones, rapid development of mobile Internet and mobile app make it possible to develop more medical apps. Although medical Apps share only 2% among all Apps, people still pay extra attention to them because of their importance in the population health and health services. Medical apps have very good prospects for development; (3) "Mobile Huashan Hospital" is patient oriented app that covers most of key process of hospital services. The modules of this app including:outpatient appointment, waiting time alerts, medication reminders, test results feedback, surgical process reminder, and individualized guidance after discharge from the hospital. This app is expected to increase the effective communication between physician and patient, thus to improve the quality of medical services; (4) research on medical apps sustainable development model suggested that the profit model of "Mobile Huashan Hospital" is mainly targeted at advertising, as well as by providing additional high quality medical services to increasing user (patient) loyalty, winning more customers for the hospital. Revenue generated by more patient care is expectable. Medical apps are different from apps in other categories in that factors concerning to patient’s safety, privacy protection, ethics issue, other risks need more attention. Through the firewall settings, we can protect the life safety of patients; By requiring informed consent, education to users about safe using, we can also ensure information security and privacy protection of the patients; By designing and developing more convenient, easy-to-use medical apps, we could avoid potential ethical issues in this area.In summary, under current difficult environment of the medical services, a rapid macro level of improvement is quite difficult and needs a long time; however, through the proper use a variety of techniques, we can improve "micro medical environment" to enhance quality of medical services. This effort has important practical significance. Smart phones, mobile Internet and the huge medical app market made it possible and necessary to develop "Mobile Huashan Hospital". By use of "Mobile Huashan Hospital", the hospital may provide additional medical services which can make up for the lack of communication between physicians and patients. It is important for enhancing the quality of medical services, increasing patient satisfaction with medical services. The effective combination of medical services, smart phones, and mobile Internet will allow the society, hospitals, and patients to benefit from it.