Chronic Disease Management Software Development – Benefits & Key Features

Chronic Disease Management is considered really challenging in the arena of healthcare, with there being a number of chronic ailments such as chronic lung & kidney disease, heart problems, and diabetes, there is just no end. Now, these ailments require the patients to maintain a daily self-management routine and manage crucial interactions with the healthcare system, thus to avoid any complications and control symptoms.

As per the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention data, 86 percent of the nation’s $2.7 trillion annual health care expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.

However, there are several means to decrease these costs, such as early prevention as well as the usage of efficient chronic disease management tools. There are a number of healthcare software out there that are designed for specialized medical devices used by hospitals as well as for desktops, smartphones, and tablets enabling self-care and monitoring at home. Thus, it helps patients, doctors, nurses, and the patient’s families to prevent the adverse effect of a disease.

What is Chronic Disease Management Software?

As we just mentioned above that there are a number of healthcare software out there and one such is Chronic Disease Management Software, which is specially developed for chronic ailments, such as cancer, diabetes, blood pressure, and heart disease. By taking patients’ families and friends into account, we witness that chronic conditions affect all of us. This is the reason why it is crucial to improve chronic conditions management. Today there are a number of Chronic Disease Management Software Development Companies out there enhancing the quality of care and empowering continuous communication with the patients. The technology offers:

• Remote care integration, which is useful to reduce appointments at the organization
• Advanced patient engagement
• Better health outcomes, lesser risk of complications, readmissions & exacerbations
• It delivers high-level care via a constant health data exchange between the patients and healthcare providers.

What are the challenges faced by healthcare in regard of chronic disease treatment?

Any disease or chronic condition requires consistent treatment, however, the current way of treating chronic diseases raises the issue of interrupted care. Here, the challenges come in the form of ill-timed medical attention. So, the physicians certainly can’t foresee patients’ health deterioration, and thus chronic care delivery often results in treating complications ad exacerbations instead of preventing them. And as soon as the patient gets discharged, their health status, comprising daily activities, problems, nutrition, and behavior, becomes a mystery till the next appointment or admission. It is nearly impossible to solve this equation without systematic care and constant data flow between patients & providers. Making use of the latest technologies, it will be possible to prolong a patient’s life and avoid severe complications.

How is the Chronic Disease Management System is helpful?

Having a CDMS is a great help to the providers, patients, and staff. The system connects to EHR (electronic health records) and the mobile app on a patient’s smartphone and enables health data analysis by sending alerts and processing information. This specialized healthcare software help patients in controlling their disease in the comfort of their homes. Healthcare providers can assist them by staying in touch, via mobile apps and gathering their objective and subjective and analyzing the data to form a full picture of the patient’s conditions. This central system can be built in a manner that it fits numerous chronic ailments and supports specific web pages and mobile apps for a particular disease. There are two implementation options:

• Custom CDMS solution development
• CRM-based development on Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce

What are the benefits of Chronic Disease Management Software/App?

Well, having a Chronic Disease Management Software for healthcare can be fruitful in a number of ways, like it allows healthcare providers to offer value-added-service to patients for better results, enable payors/employers to lessen healthcare costs via proactive and timely interventions & compliance with the care plan and it also serves pharma companies by helping them in development of a market for their drugs via drug-centric disease management and compliance management. Hence, it is clear that the CDMS has a lot to offer to providers, administrations, and as well as staff. Let’s explore a few more here:

Benefits for Administration

• CDMS allows you to design your own QA reports and track improvements
• It offers documentation and treatment plans for each patient
• Automated reporting of quality, productivity, and pay-for-performance measures
• Reduces costs and generates more revenues

Benefits for Physicians

• Allows to remotely access patient’s info via a secure internet connection
• Automated reporting features based on pay-for-performance & quality benchmarks
• Automated tracking & management of non-compliant patients in case of missed appointments/blood draws
• Improved efficiency and reduces unnecessary phone calls from staff
• Receives Automatic alerts for new lab reports and changes in critical values
• Risk profiles can be created on the basis of conditions, diagnosis, and medications
• Establishes standardized treatment protocols for chronic condition management.

Benefits for Staff

• Enable them to track non-compliant patients, eliminating the time spent to check and re-check labs for non-compliant patients. The system keeps track of these patients and applies pre-set protocols to deal with each patient.
• Clear & consistent communication with patients and healthcare professionals can take place with automated communication tools.
• A standardized treatment plan simplifies management and reduces errors.

What are the key features of Chronic Disease Management Software?

• Health education tools, comprising online & print materials as well as an audio reference library
• Shared decision-making tools on preference-sensitive and chronic conditions, thus to educate and guide members on treatment choices and condition management
• Post-hospital discharge outreach which is helpful in avoiding unnecessary readmissions
• 24/7 inbound telephonic access to Health Coaches for acute, urgent, acute & and self-care needs
• Outbound telephonic whole-person health coaching focused on reducing gaps
• Multi-channel engagement campaigns via web chat, text, email, mail, telephone, or interactive voice recognition outreach
• Robust analytics for stratifying your population based on key risk indicators
• NCQA accreditation for major chronic diseases and support for co-morbid and preference-sensitive conditions
• Comprehensive reporting on operational metrics, patient satisfaction, and clinical & financial outcomes

Read More: How to Develop a Telemedicine app on the concept of Doctor on Demand?

What are the crucial features of Chronic Disease Management Software?

It is vital to ensure systematic face-to-face care of chronic disease patients and, to a great extent, it can be ensured via CDMS. So, here, let’s explore the many crucial features of this system:

• Team-based care & care coordination across the providers
• Setting up of multiple-care programs & protocols (AWV, CCM, TCM, etc.)
• Documentation for billing purposes also includes CMS CPT code 99490
• User reports & Statistics, from them administrators can analyze staff workload as well as recognize highly efficient coaches, care coordinators & nurses
• Implemented across multiple care-provider teams, letting each group focus on their work as well as share crucial information
• Flag patients by risk, condition, or program to easily identify and monitor
• Risk profiler is crucial to assign a risk level to each patient & to adjust tracking based on risk
• Customizable workflow processes
• Records & logs time for each patient interaction
• Customized questionnaires are created for patient follow-up
• Create electronic care plans, assign teams & separate tasks among nurses, physicians, and coach coordinators.
• Automated alerts in case of trigger situations, thus to alert healthcare providers
• Integrated with Hospital EMR, Lab & Drug backbone to automatically extract patient information
• In compliance with HIPPA
• Integrated SMS & Web submission module that enables patients to submit readings remotely
• Care Notes & Memos in order to keep a track of observations by healthcare providers as well as instructions to patients.
• Track Communication between healthcare providers & patients

Importance of Mobile application in CDMS

There is no doubt that medical mobile application enables both hospital staff and patients to access all the information on the go from anywhere. Thus, developing mobile applications for chronic disease management is a great idea. It also helps to enhance patient engagement with the system.

How to create a Chronic Illness Management Software & mobile app?

If you are keen on developing medical software and apps for chronic disease management, then here are a few aspects you need to take care of:

• Prior to beginning with the development, you need to define what kind of app you really require for your healthcare institution. Like you need to decide whether it will be a usual symptom checker or there is a need for a complex chronic illness assistant app. The requirements of functionality will obviously translate into the cost of development.
• You need to have a treatment plan behind the development of CDMS, and for this, you will require to cooperate with healthcare professionals to create one.
• Keep note of the compliance. The healthcare system has certain and definite standards applied to healthcare apps (such as HIPPA, HL7, etc.).
• Get in touch with the right IT partner who is well-equipped to deliver a satisfying product as per your requirements. Not just this partner should develop software, but also ensure QA, testing and provide after-support.
• Once the software is ready, you will require support and update it regularly as per patients’ needs and market changes.

Look for an experienced CDMS Software Developer who has been established in the arena and has delivered successful projects in the past.

Why Data Analytics & Reporting is crucial in CDMS Software and Apps?

Well, this layer is created to transform the scattered information particles into vital insights that support the patient’s chronic condition care cycle. This way, the data can be further used by physicians and CDMS. Here, there are two implementation alternatives:

• A dedicated chronic disease analytical system can be created with a data warehouse, backed by OLAP cubes & visualized through dashboards, charts, and reports
• Data can be loaded to the central clinical data warehouse, and analysis is conducted there

Why is it important to have a CDMS in the form of mobile apps as well?

Always at patients’ fingertips, an app will prove to be effective, engaging, and a lot more convenient. Patients are already well-versed with mHealth apps, so tracking their nutrition, weight, and wellness will not be an issue. They just have to fill in forms regarding their general well-being (subjective & objective), medications, and daily regimen, and then tap on the Send button to share this data with the healthcare providers. Also, the app notifies health specialists about patients’ updates (subjective & objective), and negative trends in patients. Conditions and upcoming appointments. Thus, providers receive a symbiotic system with connected patients & physicians. Meanwhile, it is suggested to get different apps developed for particular chronic conditions. After all, each ailment needs to be managed specifically, then why settle for one common solution? The app is a key provider-patient point, and it handles in-bound and out-bound data flow, enabling to interact with patients effectively.

Patient to Provider Data Flow

• Subjective: Fever, pain, nausea, shiver, headache, muscle spasms, discomfort& more
• Objective: Glycose level, blood pressure, temperature & more
• Medication intake data

Also Read: Doctor on Demand Mobile App Development Cost and Key Features

Provider to Patient Data Flow

• Instructions on checking vitals, appropriate use of medications, improving physical activity & more
• Alerts regarding medication management, lab results, scheduled appointments & more
• Nutrition recommendations
• Medication intake scheme
• Motivation elements: goal setting, social-media sharing &gamification

It is recommended to create a cross-platform mobile app and the Xamarin technology comes around as a great choice to support patients with Android and iOS devices. Also, the app would be able to connect to wearables and chronic ailments-related devices.

Why is it important to choose the right Chronic Disease Management Software Development Company?

You need to partner with an experienced healthcare software development company because healthcare software is integrated with several other software and APIs and you need to have a skilled and experienced team of developers that can deal with any kind of complications while the development process. Moreover, medical software must insure various medical compliances. As you begin the process of choosing the right company for Custom Chronic Disease Management Software/Mobile App Development, you need to keep a few things in mind. Well, it is vital that you be clear about your requirements from the start and do ensure that the following features will be provided by the development firm.

• Easy to use & feature-rich
• Integrated with the EHR system of the healthcare practice
• Data Security (GDPR-compliant)
• In compliance with HIPPA, HL7, And GDPR
• EPA (Electronic Prior Authorization) Integrated
• Efficiently works on all devices (Desktops, Mobile & Tablets)

Once you find a firm that ensures these features, you can then look at other aspects, such as the firm’s reputation, past offerings and experiences, a team of developers and designers, and other essential aspects.

What is the cost to develop a Custom Chronic Disease Management Software/Mobile App?

A lot of aspects must be considered to determine the cost of developing a Custom Chronic Disease Management Software that abides by the GDPR compliances. It is a huge system connecting doctors, clinical staff, and patients in this one place. So, as it comes to the development cost, several factors affect it, such as:

• Basic Features & Functionalities
• Additional & Advance Features
• Development Platforms (Android/iOS)
• Size of the development team
• Development Partner Location
• Certifications & Compliances
• Third-Party API Integrations