Mobile Tools in Hospital Management: A Review of Smartphone Applications Designed for Healthcare Employees

Abstract

The use of mobile health applications in the healthcare services industry enables operations to be managed with less cost and the industry to provide services in a more collective structure in our present day. For these reasons, it is predicted that the industry will evolve toward a more proactive structure in the future. The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the preferred applications in the field of hospital management. The two main application stores, App Store and Google Play Store were searched using various keywords. As the criteria in the study, applications designed in Turkish and English were identified, including the categories of Medicine, Efficiency, Education, Healthcare and Fitness, Business, Lifestyle, and Utilities. A total of 159 applications were identified that met the desired criteria and were available in Google Play and iTunes stores. It was found that 68.55% of the applications were designed for patient management, some applications were specially designed at the request of hospitals, and although 86.8% of them were free of charge, they had limited distribution and use. Considering these results, it is thought that the implementation studies that will be designed according to the nationally determined standard regulations will make significant contributions to e-healthcare services.