How to Monetize Mobile Healthcare Apps?

Mobile based healthcare apps are fast penetrating into the daily lifestyle of individuals across the world. Health apps are being well recognized for their role in helping thousands of individuals to keep a track of their vitals, changes in health conditions and prompt medical practitioners when treatment might be necessary.

While it is becoming exceedingly clear to healthcare providers and enterprises now that technology is the single-most valuable investment they can make in the coming months, many still are not exactly sure about how they can monetize their technology investment.

If you’re finding yourself evaluating business prospects around this very question, you’ll be happy to know that there are a quite a few actionable ways by which you can meaningfully monetize mobile healthcare apps. There are several ways in which apps can be monetized. This article talks about the seven most popular revenue channels for mobile health care apps that you may embrace individually or in combination to enhance customer value and your bottom line. Without further ado, let’s look at what they are. 

7 Proven Ways To Monetize Mobile Healthcare Apps 

Implement a Freemium Model

In a freemium model, users can access the basic features of an application for free, while the more advanced and premium features can be reserved as chargeable. The beauty of this model is that the free part attracts a large number of initial users to try out the app, and if is a good one, the conversions can be remarkable over time. That’s because once users start liking an app and finding it useful, they’re more likely to want to pay for using its advanced features later.

 A few tips to make freemium model work best include –

• Giving away a free trial to the full-feature app
• Reminding users to upgrade frequently
• Studying usage patterns and identifying prospects that will convert

Paid Subscriptions for Premium Content

Medical apps can also try their hand at publishing peer-reviewed content that is available to users for a certain periodical subscription fee. Such a subscription could give app users access to the latest and cutting-edge research and news from the medical world. However, a consistent content publishing strategy and infrastructure needs to be developed before implementing paid subscriptions to premium content.

To make premium content help you monetize mobile healthcare apps, you must

• Publish high quality medical content
• Give away healthy tips that aren’t easily accessible
• Make sure that all the content is peer-reviewed

Non-Intrusive Localized Ad Campaigns

Localized ad campaigns can make use of RFID, NFC and Beacon-based technologies to send out alerts and notifications to customers when they are in the vicinity of a healthcare provider. These alerts can be designed to encourage the app user to make some kind of expenditure through the app. For example, people who are waiting at a doctor’s office can be sent out alerts regarding their tests, pending investigations, etc, while also urging them to make payments right away within the app.

Such localized ad campaigns work best when-

• Potential users are alerted in conspicuous situations
• The alerts are short and non-intrusive
• They use beacons and NFC to guide users to take action right from the app

Registration Fees and Paid Invites

Another meaningful business model for medical apps to explore is the introduction of registration fees. While this may put off a section of users who prefer the free and freemium models, the paid subscriptions could enhance the overall profitability and service excellence of an app. In combination, users may also be urged to invite their friends and family to try the application for a reduced subscription fees.

If you want this to work, you must

• Make your application premium-only
• Choose the right set of influencers to get others on board
• Use referral programs to encourage higher in-app purchases

Partnerships with Third-Party Entities

Health app owners can also explore revenue-generating opportunities with other applications and businesses that are closely linked to their products and services. For example, a dental clinic’s application could easily partner with an X-ray lab, so that patients can seamlessly complete billing and registration for both the services simultaneously. Promoting each other’s services can be a great way to ensure mutual revenue growth.

For successful partnerships –

• Choose the third party entities wisely
• Make sure that their services meaningfully align with your own
• Integrate their medical services within your own app to offer a seamless experience

Monetize Data with Permission

Ever since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was rolled out last year, businesses and application owners have been extra cautious regarding the confidentiality of the data they accumulate. Surprisingly, a large amount still continues to be accumulated and stored legally with prior consent, despite the odds. Such accumulated data can be used for predicting trends and drawing insights. Sharing this data, insights and predictive trends can result in sizeable monetization opportunities too.

To ensure data protection –

• Seek user consent regularly when accessing their data
• Share data only with parties that the users have given their consent for
• Regularly conduct security and data privacy audits

Introduce Gamification as a Concept

Gamification is known to encourage a competitive spirit among users. App gamification is a proven strategy that results in higher engagement rates, with an intense motivation to use the app more frequently and its continuous usage. Gamification can help medical apps to present quizzes, simulation games and other diversions to keep users right on the application, leading to higher app engagement and conversion.

For successful integration of gamification –

• Understand what makes your app users engage enthusiastically
• Gamify regular app interactions and make them shareable across social media
• Integrate games, quizzes, and other infotainment features within the app

Conclusion

Healthcare apps have a huge monetization potential with a wide range of options to support revenue generation for their investors. As such, there are multiple ways to generate a Return on Investment and the optimal revenue channel or combination of channels depends on the app’s purpose and the target user base.

Some of the proven ways to monetize mobile healthcare apps include –

• Leveraging the freemium model
• Publishing premium content that is peer-reviewed and available on paid subscription
• Making use of beacons, RFID, NFC and IoT to make localization of medical app ads a reality
• Making app registrations payable or invite-only
• Partnering with other applications that can help in cross-promotion
• Renting out accumulated data with the permission of customers
• Using gamification to drive user engagement and incentivized usage

If you are looking to build a healthcare app and need a reliable team to build the perfect healthcare mobile app then get in touch with us and earn a FREE consultation with our experts to learn more.