But building a healthcare app is no small feat - it requires a delicate balance of design, functionality and integration. One Heart Clinic know this process well: in 2024, CEO Nick Bird and his team implemented a patient app designed to offer appointment booking, communication with the OHC team and a patient portal.
Our Semble Insights webinar with Nick, alongside app developer Nick Gradwell, CEO of Amberley Innovations, offered valuable lessons for healthcare providers and tech developers alike. Here’s how they built a successful healthcare app.
In the healthcare industry, patient engagement is paramount. A well-designed app doesn’t just look good; it facilitates intuitive interactions. Nick Gradwell highlighted the importance of user-centric design in the development process:
“People buy with their eyes. They also like a good user interface. One of the key drivers was ensuring the look and feel was right for patient engagement. From the outset, making the app’s design intuitive and visually appealing was critical.”
For One Heart Clinic, the app’s design ensured that patients could easily book appointments, access medical reports and even engage in live chat - features tailored to enhance the overall healthcare experience.
Functionality is the cornerstone of any app, but especially so in healthcare, where every feature must address a real need. Nick Bird emphasised that the app’s primary purpose was to streamline processes and improve patient engagement:
“We cater to a high volume of patients and exchange a lot of information. Having an app made perfect sense for creating better pathways for our patients. It allows them to access all their information in one place and interact with us without having to pick up the telephone.”
One key functionality introduced was a live chat feature, designed to replace time-consuming email or phone exchanges, whilst also improving the experience for the patient. As Gradwell explained:
“Customers wanted an instant touchpoint. Live chat gave them the personalisation they needed to feel closer to the clinic.”
Beyond design and functionality lies the technical backbone: integration. Healthcare apps often need to connect with electronic health record (EHR) systems and other platforms. For One Heart Clinic, integration with Semble’s EHR system was crucial.
“Semble has a really good API,” Gradwell noted. “This allowed us to seamlessly connect the app with the clinic’s backend systems, enabling real-time communication of patient data. The strong relationship with Semble’s technical team was key in making this happen.”
Nick Bird added that understanding what an API can do - and leveraging existing system logic - helped streamline development:
“If we went to do this ten years ago, we’d be hard-coding everything. Today, APIs mean we can pull functionalities from existing platforms like Semble without reinventing the wheel.”
Developing a healthcare app is as much about teamwork as it is about technology. Both Gradwell and Bird stressed the importance of collaboration throughout the process. Regular communication between development teams, clinic staff and stakeholders ensured that the app met both patient and business needs.
“We followed an agile process,” said Gradwell. “Prototyping fast, demonstrating quickly and keeping communication channels open were essential. The transparency and constant feedback loop helped us deliver the app in just five months.”
Bird echoed the sentiment:
“Get your champions in place and communicate, communicate, communicate. We took everyone on this journey with us, ensuring buy-in at every stage.”
Although it’s still early days for One Heart Clinic’s app, the initial results are promising. Uptake among eligible patients reached nearly 20% in the first few months since launch, and feedback has been largely positive.
“The good thing is, it’s almost like it was always here,” Bird remarked. “We haven’t faced major issues, and the level of service remains high. Patients appreciate the convenience, and we’re starting to see efficiencies in how our staff handle processes.”
For clinics considering their own app, the lessons from One Heart Clinic’s journey are clear:
With the right approach, a healthcare app can do more than just digitize processes - it can transform the patient experience and set a clinic apart in an increasingly competitive landscape.