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WebMD, HealthTap apps leverage Apple Watch notifications for mobile patients

WebMD and HealthTap?s Apple Watch applications aim to leverage the fast-selling wearable?s notification functionality to guide on-the-go users to improve health and wellness, pointing to mobile?s potential to make personal management of medication and healthy lifestyle habits more efficient.

WebMD?s app lets users see and interact with daily medication schedules while HealthTap App for Apple Watch allows patients to stay in touch with doctors? answers, tips and reminders. The apps show how the Apple Watch, which is seeing brisk pre-sales, has the potential to accelerate the integration of online experience and meaningful communication with health practitioners, crucial in enhancing a society?s overall well-being. 

?This is a product that wouldn?t be nearly as effective without a strong dependence on mobile technology,? said Benjamin Greenberg, vice president of product management and user experience at WebMD, a New York-based provider of health news, advice and expertise. ?For true efficacy, a user needs to be able to receive a medication reminder wherever they are when it?s time to take their dose. 

?The more friction we?re able to remove from the process, the more we enable a user to adhere to their medication regimen,? he said. ?Therefore, while an iPhone can be a powerful adherence tool, we expect the Apple Watch to be even more effective.?

Setting up reminders
In WebMD?s Apple Watch app, the user first sets up medication reminders using the flagship WebMD app for iPhone. He or she then chooses a medication and selects from a preset list of dosages. WebMD either automatically provides a pill image or lets the user load one. The user than picks a time to be reminded about the notification.
 
Notifications include customizable pill images accompanied by dosage and timing information, offering the option to skip the medication, snooze or dismiss the reminder.

Customizing notifications with images of pills.

By glancing at the watch, the user can see when a dose should be taken next. If the  dose is due in under two hours, a countdown replaces the scheduled time. If the time for the last scheduled dose of the day has passed, the glance updates to show the status of this final dose ? either taken, missed or skipped. 

With HealthTap?s DocNow app, users can see a doctor 24/7 by tapping on their Apple Watch to access live high definition video consultation from an iPhone. Doctors can provide advice as well as recommend and prescribe medications for $2.99 per minute.

With DocNow, a user first taps the app on the Apple Watch. He or she then swipes the phone to be connected to a doctor for a live HD video consult from an iPhone. There is no subscription fee.

Users can receive reminders from more than 68,000 doctors, including at-a-glance medication and treatment reminders and appointment alerts.

The HealthTap App for Doctors also lets physicians manage their virtual practice on their wrist.

These healthcare Apple Watch apps come as mobile health picks up steam.

A recent poll showed that 64 percent of Americans would welcome video-enabled doctor visits and that 7 percent, or 20 million people, would switch primary care doctors to ones that offered telehealth visits.

Eliminating barrier
WebMD?s and HealthTap?s Apple Watch apps could play a role in knocking down one of the most significant barriers to achieving positive patient outcomes ? medication non-compliance.

Solving problem of medication non-compliance via mobile.

?While the iPhone can be lost or cumbersome to use, the Watch is an attached extension of your body, enabling patients to more easily and accessibly manage their health,? said HealthTap CEO-founder Ron Gutman. 

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York