Red Hat mHealth survey shows strong ROI and anticipated growth despite budget headwinds

Red Hat mHealth survey
shows strong ROI and anticipated growth despite budget headwinds

By Red Hat Mobile team

November 10, 2016

An impressive 82
percent of healthcare organizations surveyed have a fully implemented mobile
strategy, indicating a greater level of maturity compared to commercial
enterprises. A year ago, Red
Hat’s enterprise mobility survey revealed this figure to be only 52 percent of respondents
across commercial industries. In addition, nearly eight in 10 (78 percent)
healthcare organizations surveyed are achieving positive ROI from mobile app
investments. The research, commissioned with research firm Vanson Bourne, looks
at how 200 IT decision makers from public healthcare, private healthcare, life
sciences and pharmaceutical organizations in the U.S., France, Germany and the
United Kingdom implement their mobile app development strategies and some of
the challenges they face.

This success in ROI
mirrors the expectation that the average number of healthcare apps developed by
U.S. respondents over the next 12 months will grow 56 percent from nine to 14. European
respondents developed an average of 13 apps and expect that number will grow by
31 percent to 17 apps in the next 12 months.

However, the expected
increase in budgets may not support this level of growth. While respondents are
looking on average to develop 36 percent more apps in the next 12 months, they
are only planning to increase their budget 15.5 percent to support this – and
that can include the need to maintain and update existing apps. This disparity
between investment growth and desired app volumes  may not be achieved by
developing mobile apps as one-off projects. Rather a modern platform-based
approach that supports agile development and modern API-based architecture can
help increase developer efficiency, reduce development costs, and support the
increasing demand for mobile apps.

Understanding the
healthcare audience and motivations

The healthcare
industry as a whole can deploy mobile apps in an effort to both satisfy
internal business and provider needs, as well as patient demands and
competitive pressures. Mobile apps are currently provided primarily for doctors
(59 percent), patients/members (55 percent), and technicians (44 percent) by U.
S. respondents and are currently provided primarily for pharmaceutical research
development staff (53 percent), followed by patients/members (46 percent) and
doctors (43 percent) by European respondents.

The main drivers of
mobile app development are:

·         Business/internal demand for more productivity (63 percent U.S.
respondents and 60 percent European respondents)

·         Healthcare provider demand for better patient engagement and
care (60 percent U.S. respondents and 57 percent European respondents)

·         External/member/patient demand for mobile apps (56 percent U.S.
respondents and 43 percent European respondents)

However, over the next
12 months, these drivers are expected to shift slightly for both the U.S. and
European respondents. In the U.S., external/user/patient demand (60 percent) is
expected to marginally outpace demand for internal efficiencies (59 percent) as
a main driver for developing healthcare apps. In Europe, competitor pressure to
have mobile solutions is expected to advance app development (45 percent),
while external/user/patient demand (36 percent) becomes less of a factor.

Mobile healthcare challenges

Our research shows
nearly all organizations surveyed (98 percent) experience challenges when
implementing mobile solutions, including security, cost, regulatory and
compliance issues, and users/patient/customer adoption.

Security is the most
dominant business concern, with nearly all (98 percent) respondents reporting
concerns over app security. To gain further context, the survey broke down
specific security concerns:

·         Three in 10 (30 percent) of U.S. respondents reported that their
primary security concern is data encryption from device back-end systems.

·         Furthermore, 29 percent of U.S. respondents reported that their
greatest security concern is end-to-end HIPAA compliance.

·         For European respondents one in four (25 percent) report that
user authentication and authorization is their primary security concern.

Additionally, nearly
all (97 percent) respondents experience technical challenges when deploying
their organization’s mobile apps. In the U.S., 29 percent of respondents listed
back-end integration to healthcare systems as the biggest technical challenge,
followed by securing access to data at 27 percent. In Europe, 33 percent of
respondents reported their greatest technical challenge was securing access to
data, followed by deployment of app code at 21 percent. Other challenges
identified by both U.S. and European respondents include scaling (10 percent)
and app life cycle management (eight percent).

The majority of
respondents are using on-premise deployment for mobile apps, rather than cloud
deployment. More than half (53 percent) of all respondents use an on-premise or
partial on-premise deployment model. In the U.S. 23 percent deploy in a private
cloud and 11 percent in a public cloud, compared to 15 percent of European
respondents that deploy mobile apps in a private cloud and 24 percent in a
public cloud. The on-premise and partial on-premise approach is not surprising
given the regulatory and compliance requirements that govern healthcare
companies in their handling of sensitive patient information. These
organizations may benefit from looking at new generation app development and
delivery platforms, based on modern technologies and architectures that can be
deployed on-premise.

Development tools and
languages

Java is currently the
dominating back-end integration language for healthcare apps. More than half
(52 percent) of all respondents use Java for mobile app (back-end) development,
followed by .Net (15 percent), other JavaScript (13 percent), Ruby on Rails (10
percent) and Node.js (nine percent). The reliance on heavy weight languages
like Java and .Net for integration may be limiting respondents’ agility in
mobile integrations, when compared to using lightweight back-end languages such
as Node.js. Using heavy weight languages and not widespread use of platforms
such as Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (MBaaS) that can do the heavy lifting on
integration may be where the technological challenge in integration is stemming
from. 

The respondents use a
mix of different tools and platform technologies to develop mobile apps. Nearly
four in 10 (39 percent) U.S. and European respondents report their organization
or organization’s mobile app provider primarily uses a mix of common mobile
front-end toolkits (SDKs, JS frameworks, etc.) to develop mobile apps.
Approximately a quarter use rapid mobile application development (RMAD) (26
percent) or a mobile application development platform (MADP) (23 percent) for
mobile app development. Just 10 percent of U.S. respondents and only three
percent of European respondents use MBaaS to integrate mobile apps.

The needs of
caregivers, patients and business are different and wide ranging. There is no
single solution to meet the needs of all the various mobile demands, which is
reflected in the mix of different tools and platforms employed by the survey
respondents. Even the best off-the-shelf solutions or RMAD tools can only
address some of the challenges. For the healthcare industry, a central platform
may work best to help develop, manage, secure and maintain both current and
future mobile apps.

Research methodology

Red Hat, Inc.,
commissioned Vanson Bourne to poll the views of 200 IT decision makers from
private, public, life sciences and pharmaceutical healthcare organizations with
at least 1,000 employees in the U.S., France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The survey was completed in October 2016, and was carried out online.