82 percent of healthcare organizations surveyed have a fully implemented mobile strategy, indicating a greater level of maturity compared to commercial enterprises, according to a recent RedHat mobile app survey. The online survey of 200 IT decision makers from private, public, life sciences and pharmaceutical healthcare organization in the U.S., France, Germany, U.K. reveals nearly 8 in 10 (78 percent) healthcare organizations are achieving positive ROI from mobile app investments.
This positive ROI reflects the respondents expectation that the average number of healthcare apps developed by U.S. respondents over the next 12 months will grow 56 percent from nine to 14. European respondents developed an average of 13 apps and expect that number will grow by 31 percent to 17 apps in the next 12 months. Despite this increase, only 15.5 percent plan to increase their budgets to support mobile app development growth needed to to maintain and update existing apps. This disparity between investment growth and desired app volumes may not be achieved by developing mobile apps as one-off projects.
3 Main Drivers of Mobile App Development in Healthcare
Respondents stated that the three main drivers of mobile app development in healthcare are:
– Business/internal demand for more productivity (63 percent U.S. respondents and 60 percent European respondents)
– Healthcare provider demand for better patient engagement and care (60 percent U.S. respondents and 57 percent European respondents)
– External/member/patient demand for mobile apps (56 percent U.S. respondents and 43 percent European respondents)
These three main drivers are expected to shift slightly for both the U.S. and European respondents over the next 12 months. In the U.S., external/user/patient demand (60 percent) is expected to marginally outpace demand for internal efficiencies (59 percent) as a main driver for developing healthcare apps. In Europe, competitor pressure to have mobile solutions is expected to advance app development (45 percent), while external/user/patient demand (36 percent) becomes less of a factor.
Mobile App Key Challenges
Nearly all organizations surveyed (98 percent) experience challenges when implementing mobile solutions, including security, cost, regulatory and compliance issues, and users/patient/customer adoption. Security is the most dominant business concern, with nearly all (98 percent) respondents reporting concerns over app security.
Key security challenges cited in the survey include:
– Three in 10 (30 percent) of U.S. respondents reported that their primary security concern is data encryption from device back-end systems.
– 29 percent of U.S. respondents reported that their greatest security concern is end-to-end HIPAA compliance.
– For European respondents one in four (25 percent) report that user authentication and authorization is their primary security concern.
Technical Challenges
Nearly all (97 percent) respondents experience technical challenges when deploying their organization’s mobile apps. Other challenges include:
– In the U.S., 29 percent of respondents listed back-end integration to healthcare systems as the biggest technical challenge, followed by securing access to data at 27 percent.
– In Europe, 33 percent of respondents reported their greatest technical challenge was securing access to data, followed by deployment of app code at 21 percent.
– Scaling (10 percent) and app life cycle management (eight percent) identified by both U.S. and European respondents
Research Background/Methodology
Red Hat, Inc., commissioned Vanson Bourne to poll the views of 200 IT decision makers from private, public, life sciences and pharmaceutical healthcare organizations with at least 1,000 employees in the U.S., France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The survey was completed in October 2016, and was carried out online.
