A Comprehensive Guide For E-Prescription App Development

E-Prescription App Development A Complete Guide

For the last two decades, the leading healthcare providers have been trying to digitize healthcare operations to improve the quality of care. Alas! Before COVID-19, no force made this happen. The global pandemic has brought telemedicine and electronic health records into demand alongside minimum contact between patients and doctors.

Custom software– e-prescription has become a new norm in the healthcare industry. The onset of the pandemic accelerated the drive for e-prescription solution adoption, which has increased from 1.2 billion in 2020 to $3.3 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 23.3%. It has created lucrative opportunities in the e-prescription market globally.

What is an e-prescription app?

E-prescription abbreviated as electronic prescription is a digital process of connecting doctors and patients to better tackle the health conditions of patients remotely. It allows doctors to provide prescriptions digitally either through an app or website. The e-prescription app development ensures the prescription is error-free and simple to comprehend that cuts down the risks involved with traditional handwritten prescriptions.

With no handwritten prescriptions or calls involved in e-prescription apps, the patient’s data and reduced pharmacy expenses are ensured. E-prescription is an advanced version of the Online doctor appointment app development that extends online booking to doctor consultation.

Why do healthcare organizations need e-prescription apps?

All the stakeholders involved in the healthcare system are getting benefited from the e-prescription apps, but it’s not equally accepted globally. Here are the reasons that showcase why e-prescription software is essential to enhance healthcare services.

  • Eliminate wrong medication prescription issues

Hospitals are majorly suffering from medication errors that occur due to providing the wrong medicines, prescribing the wrong medicines, giving medication at the wrong frequency, or not considering medical history thoroughly. The adverse effect of this wrong medication makes a large number of people suffer severely every year. During the pandemic, the self-medication trend has increased the number of cases in large numbers.

The issues created under clinical treatment when the doctor makes errors in the prescription selection, the alternative drug is provided by a pharmacist without the doctor’s approval, a pharmacist dispenses unvalidated prescriptions, or the medical history of the patient is not properly verified by the doctor.

The e-prescription eliminates all of the occurrences by digitizing the patient’s health records which doctors can access and make digital prescriptions accurately. The e-prescription is sent to the pharmacist for the apt prescription delivery, which is approved by the doctors instantly. With reduced prescription confirmation for dosages or refills, the patients are better served.

  • Ensure robust security

Medication errors occur when prescriptions provided to pharmacists can put the patient’s life at stake, which is prevented with an e-prescription app. The doctors generate the prescription digitally and send it to the patient safely and precisely. It eliminates the need for taking prescriptions everywhere. The app enables them to showcase a QR code to the pharmacist that they can scan with the in-app camera to view the prescription and then provide it accordingly.

  • Clinical decisions get automated

The doctors cannot remember the medication-related data every time. The medicines come in various forms and strengths that can create side effects or allergies to the patients when not prescribed at the right frequency. E-prescription apps enable doctors to look up the medicines and prescription instructions to know if the prescription becomes a good fit for the patient considering the medical history.

The selection of prescriptions from the drop-down list accelerates the prescription filling and refilling process. Besides, the app sends alerts to the doctors when the adverse reaction of dosage on the patient is discovered so that better treatment is provided.

  • Adherence to e-prescriptions improved

Many times, the patients forget to take medicines or fill their prescriptions which badly impacts their health. The e-prescription app development allows doctors to track unfilled prescriptions and remind the same through in-app chat. Also, the software can track the dosage frequency so that underdose or overdose medicine intake won’t occur, which ensures adherence to medication adherence.

  • Prescription processing got faster

Traditionally, the prescription filling process is arduous with multiple parties involved. The e-prescription app automates and makes refilling faster. With digital prescription creation and EHR availability on hand, the interaction between doctor and patient becomes simpler. It enables pharmacists to prepare and process the verified prescription easily.

What does the e-prescription app feature?

The benefits of e-prescription have appealed to you to get build an e-prescription app by partnering with the Best App Development Company. If so, you must know what’s the best way to get to the market and enhance the application at a later stage with different interface development.

When developing the e-prescription app, three interfaces with a distinct set of features were built. Let’s discuss them in detail.

For patients:

  • Prescription history: Patients can access and view the list of all prescriptions provided by different doctors.
  • Prescription detail: The latest prescription and related information such as dosage, time, side effects, and prices are viewed.
  • Timely reminders: Ensure patients take medications on time and stay healthy.
  • Effortless ordering: Patients can get the medicine delivered to their doorstep with a real-time tracking feature.
  • Payment integration: Enable effortless payment using multiple payment modes that facilitate online ordering.
  • Electronic health records: Complete information of patients such as personal data, medical data, family medical history, and other health-related data.

For doctors:

  • E-prescription: Doctors can search for a particular medicine and its details to generate an accurate prescription.
  • Patient’s data: Access and view patient information to provide the best prescription.
  • Prescription Management: Doctors reserve the right to cancel or change the prescription when they find variation in the patient’s health.
  • Prescription sharing: Doctors can share e-prescriptions with pharmacists for effortless medicine delivery.

For pharmacists:

  • Patient data: View and access the patient’s health-related condition and medications provided.
  • Doctor’s data: Display doctor’s information such as personal details, specialization, prescription provided, and patient reviews.
  • E-prescription data: The app stores all the e-prescriptions provided to deliver medicines to the patients.
  • Order management: Pharmacists can manage the prescription filling request based on their availability in stock.
  • View order history: View the prescriptions filled and refilled by the patients along with their status- new, pending, or completed.
  • Transaction data: Track the payment made by the patients for prescription filling or not.
  • Inventory management: View and access medicines in inventory for optimal stock-level management. The medicine search by category or specifications becomes a breeze.

How to make the e-prescription app work like a pro?

  • Stay compliant with healthcare regulations

The e-prescription app stores and manages sensitive information related to patients’ health data, communication between patients and doctors, and other health diagnosis reports, which must be kept confidential. The app should comply with HIPAA in the USA, DPA in the UK, or GDPR in Europe while dealing with confidential patient information.

The healthcare web developers take care of device security, data encryption, protected access, regulatory compliance, and software testing to ensure healthcare software security. There are some healthcare APIs that ensure multi-level data protection, secured data sharing, easy data access, and report generation through threat prevention tools.

  • Advanced technology integration

A series of integrations help in diminishing medication errors and improving the quality of care.

  • The integration of a clinical decision support system with an e-prescription app helps in analyzing health data before making suggestions to doctors for better prescriptions. ML technology is leveraged to detect common patterns in healthcare data that enable doctors to make informed decisions backed by their observations.
  • The payer database and PBM integration with the e-prescription app allow the doctors to prescribe only those medicines’ brands that are covered under the patient’s insurance policy with the patient’s policy information. It enables patients to get the benefit of insurance and enjoy quality care.
  • The EHR integration with the e-prescription app makes it easy for doctors to access the patient’s data scattered and stored at multiple places and make an informed prescription decision. The access to in-app chat between doctors and patients allows doctors to add more instructions for prescriptions.
  • Pharmacy management system integration with the e-prescription app makes it easy for doctors to identify nearby pharmacies and access their inventory levels before making prescriptions.

Conclusion

The e-prescription app development is a way to step up the game in the healthcare ecosystem. It’s warmly embraced due to favorable consumer perceptions and improved benefits that healthcare organizations are witnessing with the continued growth of telehealth by 38-fold in 2022. 

The reduced medication errors, improved patient satisfaction, and increased digital preferences are better addressed by digital prescription solutions. It’s high time for healthcare organizations to invest resources and dollars in e-prescription software development and advanced integrations to deliver quality care that modern, tech-savvy patients expect at the least.

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About the Author: Ranjit Ranjan

More than 15 years of experience in web development projects in countries such as US, UK and India. Blogger by passion and SEO expert by profession.