Even the most feature-packed hospital app is going to fail if its content is not so great. Your development partner can do a lot to make your app appealing, but they need your help and expertise to make sure the app has the right content for your patients and visitors. After all, the best hospital apps cover the whole patient journey.
Let’s review the content required for most hospital apps. Generally, this information is gathered by your facility’s marketing team and provided to your app development partner.
Who Are You? Informational Content
Fundamentally, your app needs to tell patients and visitors about your hospital, describe its specific departments and provide details about the physicians who work there. In Phunware’s apps for hospitals (the FrenchWay app for Dignity Health’s French Hospital Medical Center is pictured below), this content appears on the About screen and within department and physician directories.
About Screen
- Hospital photo and/or logo
- Short descriptor paragraph (should fit within one smartphone screen—you can probably edit down what is on your website)
- “Tap-to-call” link
Physician and Department Directories
- Images (if applicable)
- Brief descriptor
- Contact information
How Do I Get There? Directional Content
Your app will need to guide users around the hospital in the physical world. Maps and wayfinding assets are the most critical element—because accurate navigation is the most valuable feature in a hospital app.
Maps
- Comprehensive and up-to-date maps of each floor and building in the facility that show accurate hallway routes and doors to the rooms
- Text descriptors for each floor (optional)
Point-to-Point Navigation
- Site map showing all buildings and parking
- Building floor plans with halls and doorways accurately marked
- Details and descriptions about key points of interest (POIs)
- Entrances
- Departments
- Pharmacy
- Cafeteria(s)
- Gift shop(s)
- Public restrooms
- Elevators and stairs
- Ramps and other accessible features
- On-site and off-site parking lots
See how Dignity Health is using a mobile solution to improve patient wayfinding and experience.
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What Can You Teach Me? Value-Added Content
Many hospitals choose to enhance their apps with health-related information that is relevant to the population they serve—think “Pregnancy Timeline” or “Tips for Managing Diabetes.” You can add links in some areas of your hospital app to drive users to content on your website. There are also several options for third-party content syndication.
How Can I Get Your App? Information for The Apple App Store and Google Play
Describing your app in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store is an important part of app launch. When a patient or visitor searches for your app, you will want it to be paired with a good description and some key screen shots to encourage downloads. Plus, app descriptions are now searchable, so you’ll want to utilize primary keywords for maximum visibility.
Apple App Store and Google Play content
- App Icon
- Title (your app name + your hospital name)
- Text description (use keywords)
- Screenshots
Content Is (Almost) Everything.
Complete, easy-to-understand content within your app will make it a valuable tool for your users and keep them coming back to it, making them more engaged and connected with your hospital. Now that Apple has made app content searchable in iOS 9, your app content serves a marketing role as well. Properly indexed for iOS 9 and with Google app indexing enabled, your app content can show up in search results. This means that you will want to keep your content as relevant, compelling and current as possible.
I hope this overview has been helpful. As you discuss the scope of your app project, your development partner is the true guru about asset needs, mapping formats, naming conventions and launch criteria. Go in with an open mind and a good checklist, and you will surely be successful!
Want to learn more? Our comprehensive hospital app launch guide tells you everything you need to know about content gathering—and a lot more!
