The following is a guest article by Lee Jones, Chief Product Officer at Gozio Health
More than 91% of American adults have a smartphone, and more than half prefer to access their healthcare via a mobile device. One analysis suggested that 2025 would be the year when consumer-facing devices truly transform care delivery, allowing all consumers to fully participate in more equitable care, while fostering richer provider-patient partnerships and improved health care outcomes.
Yet consumers get substantially better experiences from their favorite hotel chain app than they do from most health system mobile apps. Mobile interactions in healthcare are often disjointed and impersonal, characterized by multiple entry points. For example, consumers may have to log in and out of more than one app for appointment scheduling, bill payment, and patient portals. Or, they may be fed generic information that has nothing to do with their health status.
In contrast, consider how the airline industry approaches mobile experience. A consumer receives a reminder the day before a scheduled flight that provides a direct avenue for check-in. Delays and flight changes are communicated in real-time with options to reschedule flights right in the app. Upon arrival at the airport, wayfinding guides the consumer to desired locations, whether a restaurant, shop, or gate. While the consumer waits, the app makes suggestions based on known preferences about future travel.
The reality is that consumer expectations are being set by industries outside of healthcare, and there is a lot of catching up that needs to happen. Mobile strategy is fast becoming a foundational element for patient acquisition and retention at U.S. health systems. In fact, it has the potential to take consumers from brand awareness to conversion and ultimately, loyalty when done right.
Stage One: Awareness
Awareness is where consumers begin seeking and analyzing options. As the word suggests, it’s where the first experience with a health system brand happens.
Bottom line: first impressions are crucial for moving to the consideration stage. A recent survey underscores the urgency for healthcare organizations to remove friction, build trust, and enhance convenience through digital offerings, echoing the sentiments of another study that found nearly half of consumers would switch providers based on the ability to communicate via smartphone.
Driving awareness through mobile in an optimal way starts with the download of a unified mobile app that brings together all digital-facing elements and delivers immediate value to a consumer. Does a visitor need wayfinding to locate a family member who is hospitalized? Is a patient looking for a provider directory to locate a cancer specialist? Is a consumer looking for free cholesterol screenings?
A frictionless first experience that provides immediate gratification lays the groundwork for patients to move towards actual use of a health system’s services.
Stage Two: Conversion
Driving awareness through a mobile strategy allows consumers to seamlessly move to the conversion phase, where they are actively seeking services. It is here that expectations become more pronounced and why effective strategies can be true competitive differentiators for health systems.
In tandem with awareness, a conversion experience begins with convenience—meeting consumer needs with the least amount of uncertainty and friction as possible. In healthcare, especially, where trust in the system has plummeted in recent years from 71.5% in 2020 to 40.1% in 2024, ease of access to services is critical.
While a provider search may have led to the download of a health system app, the question becomes whether the solution is intuitive enough to guide a potential patient to the next steps. How easy is it to then schedule an appointment from the app? A patient who is able to make their next move within just a couple of minutes of provider look-up is going to be much more satisfied than if they had to exit the app and make a phone call.
Stage Three: Loyalty
Brand loyalty does not come from a “one and done.” It comes from a positive first experience and ongoing touchpoints that continue to build trust and add value to a consumer’s healthcare experience. You have achieved “loyalty” when a customer doesn’t shop around – they open your branded mobile app and book or buy from you directly.
In a competitive health market, what differentiates a health system’s mobile strategy is not just having an app but also the ability to create a seamless and hyper-personalized digital encounter. The best approaches to personalizing the healthcare digital experience incorporate not just data regarding the consumer’s medical history, but also data from every touchpoint the consumer has within the health system. This 360-degree consumer view could include participation in community events like screenings, heart walks, and donations to the hospital foundation, for instance.
For example, health systems can tailor specific types of education and outreach to patients based on their interests or diagnoses. This level of personalization cannot happen without the ability to customize app development, though. Consequently, health systems should turn to an open digital platform for integrating the services most likely to appeal to consumers, and a tightly integrated omnichannel approach—from mobile to web to the patient portal—that fosters seamless experiences.
The bottom line is checking a box that says “we have a mobile app” means little if consumers don’t find value in it. Health systems that thoughtfully consider how mobile strategy can drive brand loyalty and then create the personalized mobile experiences consumers have come to expect are poised for significant competitive differentiation.
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