How to create a medication adherence app
The features you could consider and the development options available to you
Medication non-adherence is a global health problem, with annual costs estimated to be between US$100 and U$290 billion in the US alone.
Traditional medication adherence methods such as sticky notes, organizing medications in special boxes and reminders from healthcare professionals may not be helpful in the long term and may not be effective for everyone. Digital interventions with a behavioral approach, if adopted well, can be far more convenient, accessible and effective. For example, intervention apps incorporating behavioral strategies like prompts and habit-formation activities have proven effective in improving medication adherence.
So, how do you get started?
First, think about who you intend to target, research your audience and identify your content needs.
This is covered in this article on a 10-step process to creating an app.
In this article we cover the app features you could cover to drive medication adherence and the app development options available to you.
App features you could consider
Features determine how you display content to users, obtain data, engage users and so much more. Below is a list of ideas you could consider:
1. Medication schedule
Help patients manage and track their medication intake from one place, so they can stay organized. With this feature, patients can input their medication details — name, dosage, frequency and intake time — into your app.
2. Medication reminder
Ensure patients never miss a dose and help them achieve consistency. Using notifications, you can remind patients to take their medication(s) at specific times of the day. Add a snooze function so patients can ‘snooze’ a reminder for a set period (eg. 15 minutes). Ensuring this feature works effectively in different time zones is also vital.
3. Symptom tracker
Give patients the ability to monitor their health condition. Through a symptom tracker, patients can log their symptoms at regular intervals (daily, weekly, etc.) You can also add a scale to gauge the severity of their symptoms.
4. Prescription refill reminder
Ensure patients refill their medications on time, especially for those taking multiple medications at a time — a scenario known as polypharmacy. With this feature, patients can input the dates that their medications need to be refilled.
5. Gamification
Medication adherence can be stressful. Turn it into an enjoyable experience through interactive elements like rewards.
For example, you can award points every time a patient takes their medication or after they hit a specific goal consistently for a certain period. Once they have collected X points, patients can redeem the points for a voucher.
6. Progress tracking
Let patients (and carers and healthcare practitioners if they have access) monitor their adherence rates over time. Do this by providing charts and other visual trackers to help patients monitor their level of ongoing adherence. You can also add the ability to export and share insights with third parties.
7. Support network
Allow patients to share their experiences and encourage and support one another. Using this feature, you can provide patients with social support from groups of people with similar health conditions/ medication challenges.
8. Medication information
Educate patients about their medication so that they are fully informed. This feature gives patients easy access to dosage instructions, potential interactions, side effects and warnings.
9. Educational resources
Empower patients to make informed decisions on their own by providing audio content, videos and infographics on the importance of medication adherence and valuable tips. This is especially helpful for patients from remote areas, disadvantaged communities and patients who are differently abled.
10. Multilingual
Increase accessibility to various groups of patients such as those from different ethnic groups by providing multiple language options.
Select your development approach
You have a few options:
1. Hire a custom development agency or in-house team
If you have access to a team with cross-functional expertise in digital health app development, you can develop completely novel, state-of-the-art solutions. However, it’s not an economically viable solution in many cases with the initial development cost averaging $300K and typical timeframes of 12+ months to design and develop the first version of an app.
Making iterations to your app after the user testing stage adds additional cost and time to your project. You also have to provide a lot of input on how you’d like to drive specific health or behavior change outcomes through the app, as the team may not have the knowledge to do so independently. The annual cost of maintaining the app is typically around 50% of the initial development cost. This option is suitable if you are creating something novel with justifiably high costs and don’t want any restrictions on what you can do.
2. Use a low-code platform
With this option, you will need to engage a team of developers to put the solution together but you can leverage some pre-built components and templates to reduce your overall development time and cost. However, most low-cost platforms on the market specialize in building process automation apps rather than patient-focused apps like medication adherence apps. With this option, you are dependent on the low-code platform’s suite of pre-built features. This option is suitable if you’re looking to create a fairly customized app. It is more affordable than full-code, but more expensive than no-code.
3. Use a generalist no-code platform
Generalist no-code platforms offer more flexibility in building your app’s features, UX design, etc. It is a possible option if you are looking to build an MVP (minimal viable product) for testing out your idea and do not mind rebuilding the actual product later. However, you still require some development knowledge to piece everything together. There is a steep learning curve, and the platform may not necessarily have pre-built components capable of driving specific health or behavior change outcomes. Hence using these platforms to build an app can be a time-consuming and tedious experience, and result in a solution that does not scale. These platforms also do not meet specific privacy and security requirements applicable to health apps.
4. Use specialist no-code platforms
Alternatively, you could create your app using a specialist no-code platform that caters to healthcare. A unique solution in this category is Cogniss, a platform that provides end-to-end no-code infrastructure for healthcare experts to create sophisticated consumer and patient-facing digital health solutions. By eliminating the need for coding and UX design knowledge, Cogniss gives experts the freedom and flexibility to innovate.
Cogniss allows you to pick and configure pre-defined UX and functional components. This makes the platform robust enough to build unique apps yet intuitive enough to have a short learning curve.
Compared to custom development, Cogniss-powered apps cost significantly less to create and maintain, and can be launched in weeks rather than years.
Concerned about meeting privacy and security standards? Cogniss is built on a Certified AWS Well-Architected Framework, simplifying the process of making your app compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, DTAC, DiGA, and more.
Want to get started with creating an app?