HBI Awards 2018: A patient platform app with 40,000 regular users
Medicover Poland is present in each of Poland’s regions and cares for more than 1m people.
It created a mobile application at the end of 2016 allowing patients to manage their health from anywhere in the world. The platform allows patients to make appointments, access test results, message the doctor and nursing staff, order prescriptions and access Medicover’s telemedicine platform for remote consultations. Over 130,000 have used the service, with 40,000 going on to become regular users. Medicover estimates that the app has led to cost savings of more than €150,000 in the last year
Full application
1. Briefly describe the organisation giving number of facilities, staff, revenue numbers.
Medicover Poland is a part of Medicover, leading international healthcare and diagnostic services provider, established in 1995 (www.medicover.com). The company is currently present in all regions of Poland. By the end of 2017, Medicover had 1,024,000 patients under its care. Since 2009, the company has also offered the services of its own multi-speciality Medicover Hospital, located in the Wilanów district in Warszawa. As a medical company, Medicover in Poland provides its patients with a full range of medical services, including outpatient services, laboratory diagnostics, diagnostic imaging, dentistry, as well as comprehensive hospital care. The services, available in the form of subscriptions and medical insurance packages, are addressed both to companies and individuals. For more information please visit: www.medicover.pl.
2. Please describe the patient platform. What precisely does it enable the patient to do?
The mobile application for Medicover patients enables them to manage their health on their own at any time and from anywhere on the globe. The application contains a series of features, including:
1. Ability to search for, arrange and cancel appointments with a selected doctor in a selected city and facility at a selected date; ability to check the working hours of physicians.
2. Access to results of examinations with a doctor’s comments after his/her verification of the results.
3. Ability to write to the doctor after a visit that has taken place and to send a request for contact with a nurse.
4. Order prescriptions for medicines taken on a regular basis; view the status of a placed order; access the list of all prescribed medicines and the order history.
5. View referrals issues by a doctor: access to medical history and detailed data concerning referrals (e.g. the issue date of the referral or its date of validity).
6. Check locations of Medicover and cooperating facilities.
7. Synchronise appointment dates directly with the calendar in a smartphone.
8. Go to the telemedical platform in the Medicover OnLine patient portal (website), on which the patient can consult the doctor remotely. Medicover patients can contact physicians on an ad hoc basis or after arranging an e-appointment in advance. The system makes it possible to consult a general physician, paediatrician, endocrinologist, dermatologist, allergist, midwife or travel medicine physician. General physicians and paediatricians on duty are available for patients from 7.00 a.m. to 12.00 midnight 7 days per week.
3. Please provide a link to an online demonstration of the device.
4. What in your opinion makes the platform unique?
Medicover application is currently one of the most modern solutions of this type on the Polish market. The scope of features and options available for the patient is very broad and makes it possible for the patient to manage his/her health in a comprehensive and effective manner. It also responds to the need of empowering patients and increasing their motivation to take care of their own health, facilitate contacts between physicians and between physicians and patients.
Introducing this functional application is a success of a team that included most of the company’s departments. The IT team was responsible for determining business needs and programming (among other things) infrastructural solutions in the application; the Customer Service Department was responsible for researching patients’ expectations and needs, preparing a project of the application (scope, expectations) and the business context, processing opinions and complaints related to the application; the Medical Division was responsible for the medical content of the application; the Operations Division was responsible for implementing processes that make it possible to actually deliver the services offered by means of the application; the Marketing Department was responsible for graphic visualisation of the application, preparing communications and content in the application, carrying out information and promotional campaigns, increasing the number of the application’s users among Medicover patients and employees.
The application is still being developed, and the patients have a constant and important influence on its shape. Taking advantage of users’ opinions, two very important features (among other things) were implemented in the application: the ability to remember the patient’s card number and login in using a fingerprint (Touch ID, Android Fingerprint).
5. When was the service first launched?
Month : 12
Year : 2016
6. What impact has the platform had on your business?
How many users have signed up for the service? : Over 133 000
How many have subsequently become active users? We would expect this to be a small percentage of the sign ups.
Please define what exactly you mean by an active user. : Active user is one that logged in to the application at least once in the selected period by doing some action. This indicator has been steadily increasing since the implementation of the application. On average, last year we had active users at the level of 40,000. Some 66,250 users were active in the last 28 days .
Have you a net promoter score for the service from active users? If so, what is it? : No
Has it led to any incremental increase in revenue? If so, how can you best quantify this? : Yes, but we do not separate how much the application itself has brought, but we look at two self-service websites available for Medicover patients. Over the past year, we saved PLN 639,000.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Zhasmina Simeonova or call 0207 183 3779.
