So You Want to Build an App?
Best Practices in Pharma App Development
Spending on mobile applications in healthcare will total an estimated $705.8 million in 2010.1 As companies hype “There’s an app for that”, many life science companies are trying to figure out how to most effectively jump on the mobile bandwagon.
With 82% of physicians now owning a Smartphone2, it is more vital than ever for life science companies to deliver educational interaction through mobile technology—accessed at a physician’s convenience from any location.
But with roughly 185,000 apps for download in Apple’s app store, an estimated 60,000 on the Android platform, and 6,000 health-related apps overall3, HCPs can easily get lost in the growing world of mobile apps. The challenge for life science companies in mobile app development lies in content creation, vendor selection and promotion- building it doesn’t guarantee they will come.
As a solution, many life science brands are partnering with established companies who have built extensive mobile medical education platforms attracting millions of HCPs who access these mobile reference libraries and tools on a daily basis. In fact, 66% of physicians use these partner mobile medical resource applications more than once a day.2
Some clear benefits of partnering with a mobile media platform company include:
Reach –With hundreds of applications in the mobile resource center library, life sciences can reach more than 200,000 HCPs who rely on the mobile educational information and resources provided.
Compatibility – While some developers only create apps for certain platforms, mobile medical resource companies, such as Skyscape, create applications that are available on all popular platforms, including Android, Palm OS®, BlackBerry®, iPhone, Symbian S60, 3rd edition (Nokia)® and Windows® Mobile.
Tech Support – In-house customer service helps HCPs navigate the mobile programming 24-hours a day—a service not offered by traditional app developers.
Yet regardless of how mobile marketing is approached, it is crucial to provide value for your target audience. Some “do’s” and “don’ts” when considering a mobile application project include:
Don’t:
- Simply repurpose your brand.com site
- Develop your mobile application from a purely promotional point-of-view
- Develop a mobile application so narrow in content or scope that healthcare providers (HCPs) quickly tire of it
Do:
- Create a mobile application that offers real patient care and clinical benefits to the HCP
- Focus on clinical tools in your mobile application that saves the HCP time
- Include a news stream so the mobile application is constantly updated
- Include trusted, best-in-breed, third- party medical content the HCP can use over and over again
In conclusion, consider developing your mobile application with a partner that has relationships with your target audience, can build the application on multiple platforms, can provide customer support and can help guide the development of an application that will be highly valued by your target audience.
For more information on Physicians Interactive’s mobile media platform, powered by Skyscape, please call 800.794.6757 or email info@physiciansinteractive.com.
1. Compass Intelligence, 2010
2. Manhattan Research, Taking the Pulse v10.0, 2010
3. CNET News “Getting to the next 5 billion App Store downloads.” July 9, 2010
