Cancer Management? There’s an App for that.

In the rush to achieve a heightened level of efficiency, lowered costs and improved quality of care, mobile health care applications are gaining popularity among health care professionals and consumers.

More than 200 million mobile health applications are used by doctors and patients today, and more than 600 million medical apps will be available by 2012, according to a new report from Pyramid Research

From a consumer perspective, mobile apps have become useful tools that lead to a sense of responsibility for the user…a way to keep track of and improve one’s health.

Beyond the consumer benefits, it’s apparent that mobile-enabled healthcare also has the opportunity to impact provider decisions and best practices.

These facts will certainly have an influence on marketing and public relations strategies set forth for healthcare entities. However, we must be careful not to let the latest “shiny lure” have undue influence on strategic plans as the audience demographic always needs to be considered. For example, can incorporating a mobile strategy be effective for your cancer center? Here are some statistics that need to be considered:

If we take a look at the 50+ crowd that use an app to manage their health, the percentages seem low at 5 – 6%, but they will only grow. Consider that of the 82% of U.S. adults who are now active cell phone users, 43% now have apps on their phones, and more than two-thirds of them use those apps regularly. In other words, 24% of the U.S. adult population actively uses apps according to a recent Pew Internet Study.

Armed with this information and given the proliferation of these apps, incorporation into your strategy certainly warrants some level of consideration in 2012.

Like with any new technology, these apps will continue to evolve, become more user-friendly and adoption rates will increase. Accordingly, it’s important to stay atop these trends to project an up-to-date and overall “cutting edge” image for your cancer center. It is a fact that if people view you as being cutting edge with your marketing, then you must certainly have the most cutting edge tools to help them in a potential fight against cancer.