It’s a fact that more and more individual and big healthcare providers are investing in the development of healthcare apps to improve the quality of their services. According to research by Grand View Research Inc., the global digital health market size is expected to reach USD 295.4 billion by 2028 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 15.1% over the forecast period. What is the reason for such significant growth? There is an increasing demand for the ability to manage healthcare needs online, given that many aspects of daily life are becoming more digital. With the convenience that healthcare apps provide, more and more people want to use mHealth apps in order to schedule appointments, review their prescriptions, or talk to specialists through a video call for online diagnosis.
However, there are many business advantages that come with the investment in digital products in the healthcare industry. What are these? Continue reading to find out.
The biggest healthcare players invest in mobile apps. Why should you do it too if you want to compete
Telehealth applications are not only beneficial to patients. From a healthcare provider’s standpoint, mHealth apps offer many advantages. Based on research done by Deloitte, the 8 top benefits of digital transformation within healthcare organizations include:
Better consumer satisfaction and engagement Providing your patients with an application that enhances their experience when it comes to managing their health, especially one with functionalities that correspond to their needs, will increase their satisfaction.
Improved quality of care and patient outcomes Thanks to the on-demand nature of digital solutions, your patients will have the possibility to access all the necessary functionalities when they need them. This means they will be able to receive the help they need in a faster manner, without having to e.g. drive to your clinic.
Ability to compete better with traditional players and disruptors Entering the digital sphere means that you will have the competitive edge over healthcare providers that rely on traditional working models. Moreover, you will be able to reach and attract more patients who want to manage their health using digital solutions.
Revenue growth By incorporating a digital app into your revenue streams, you will see your revenue grow in two ways: on one hand, the app will offer you an additional monetization method, and on the other hand, it will decrease additional costs, for example, in booking appointments.
Improved cost efficiencies One of the ways that investing in a digital solution improves the cost efficiencies is that by enabling appointments to be made via mobile or web applications, there is a decreased need to employ a large team of people to handle bookings manually.
Increased agility and scalability around technology After the initial investment in the application is done, it is easy to scale it up or down depending on the needs. If you find that your application is lacking a certain functionality, it is easier and faster to develop it and introduce it to your target group.
Better staff and employee satisfaction A digital application can be also used to track and analyze your employees’ satisfaction. The ability to gather feedback from your staff will provide valuable information, so you can adjust and deliver results that your employees want.
Better data-sharing and collaboration with health players and other health systems One of the most important reasons to invest in a digital application in healthcare is the possibility of storing valuable data in a more secure and efficient way. Having the data in the cloud, for example, makes it easier to analyze it and share it with other healthcare professionals.
In addition, digital technology enables patients to provide real-time feedback so that regulatory reporting can be completed within a few months rather than months. With quick feedback, consumer issues can be resolved much more quickly than with previous non-digital solutions.
What functionalities to include in your mHealth app in order to ensure its success?
Taking the above into consideration, healthcare apps offer many benefits not only to the patients but also healthcare providers themselves. However, most of the apps fail to meet the patient’s expectations, and thus do not support the business needs of health companies. To visualize the problem, let’s consider the app usage data. There are more than 400,000 healthcare apps available in the app stores but most of the healthcare apps have less than 10,000 downloads. How to design and develop a mHealth app that will be among the successful ones?
There are several functionalities that a mHealth application should have in order to be engaging and successful. We discussed them in detail in a recent article on our blog. You can find it here.
Do you want to develop an eHealth mobile app but don’t know where to start? We can use our experience and discuss your idea with you. Contact us using the form below and one of our colleagues will reach out to you to schedule a non-binding call.
The worst pandemic times seem to be already behind us and the market is slowly coming back to life after two years of lockdowns and online events. Since we can meet stationary without fear, our focus is to conduct conferences, workshops and other face to face events. At Espeo, we believe that nothing can replace interpersonal contact in a traditional form. This is why our first post-pandemic stationary event, coding.fest, took place on the 21st of April. It was an amazing meeting hosted in Gdańsk (Olivia Business Centre, O4 Coworking), from where our employees from Tricity work. Three of our employees (Piotr Horzycki, and Szymon Biduła) have prepared prelections about PHP, Node.js, and Blockchain technologies. In this piece, we have collected summaries of the most important information from each speech that may be useful for you at work.
Handling currency in an international fintech (Piotr Horzycki, Senior PHP Developer)
It’s tricky to handle multiple currencies in international fintech projects. From payment gateways to billing engines, there is a risk of losing money due to wrong calculations. When different systems have their own way of handling money, it’s easy to make a terrible mistake. Fortunately, we have a set of good practices, industry standards, and libraries for popular programming languages. Let’s start from using proper data types. Because most currencies have minor units of 1/100, it is natural to use decimal numbers to represent the amount. However, computers do not handle decimal numbers natively. Try adding 0.1 + 0.2 in a browser’s debugging console and you will not get the expected 0.3 due to a binary floating point system being used internally. This is why most e-commerce applications store an amount in the smallest unit as an integer. To make the calculations more reliable, especially across multiple currencies, a Money Pattern was invented. It already has successful implementations across PHP, Java, Javascript and other languages (MoneyPHP, Java Money, Dinero.js). Addition, subtraction, tax calculation, allocation, currency conversion – these are easily handled by well-tested libraries. When interchanging data between APIs, it is crucial to agree upon a contract. It’s not enough to just send a number and label it as “price.” Thus, it is common to provide an object that combines an amount and a currency, like {“amount”: 1234, “currency”: “EUR”}. It would be even better to clarify use of integers with a label like amountInteger. This way we can avoid all misunderstandings.
Wojtek took us on a journey through the Yet Another NestJS App. Together, we discovered the unpleasant factors that developers encounter quite often during application development, such as: tangled codebase – instilling fear of change, fixed dependencies – causing vendor lock and reducing migration possibilities, cannonade of Mocked Dependencies – to set up your every single test. This final state of evolution is recognizable in the industry as The Big Ball of Mud and often ties developer’s hands, making it difficult for them to adapt to current business needs. This may end up with exponentially growing maintenance expenses, issues with meeting desired time-to-market and draining morale with poor development experience. Later, we highlighted The Architecture we Might Need: explicit, flexible and testable. These factors led us to the concept of Hexagonal Architecture. We’ve learned about its rules, building blocks, flow, and dependency relations between components. Limiting the integration points to the bare minimum and explicitly defining them introduced a bunch of improvements: better code organisation – through cognitive-friendly structure, increased testability – making entire business flow unit-testable, enhanced understanding – by exposing business processes, flexibility – possibility to delay critical decisions (aka. points of no return). Wojtek also showed us a NestJS project implemented in Hexagonal Architecture, cleverly using DI mechanism, encapsulating dependencies in Self-Contained Modules – hiding all implementation details and setting them up via Composition Root. We also saw how a modular, hexagonal approach can help us with microservice separation.
Are you a Node.js Developer looking for unique career opportunities? Check our job offer and join #espeocrew!
Connecting the DeFi space: Building bridges between blockchains (Szymon Biduła, Blockchain Developer)
Currently, the blockchain landscape is composed of many protocols that represent different design choices and as a result are mostly incompatible with each other. Yet, the liquidity, that could be measured by the overall market cap, is divided only among a few top players. Given the rapid rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) that is shaping the current market, underdogs need to find a way to bring the liquidity that enables DeFi or face unpleasant consequences. Therefore, many foundations and companies are interested in creating bridges between different blockchains. Creating such a solution for the client could be a daunting task for the developer. After all, one needs to take into consideration even the miniscule details of each blockchain to enable a seamless token swap. Thus, during the presentation a mental framework was presented that could make this task easier. This framework consisted of a list of issues that needed to be resolved on every bridge and questions that were worthy of lengthy discussion with the client during the design phase. Finally, the potential security risks were highlighted as bridges are currently the main target of the hackers attacks in the blockchain space.
Are you a Blockchain developer looking for new challenges? We have multiple growth opportunities for you! Check out our open job positions, apply and join our team!
The meetup provided ample opportunity to discuss interesting questions raised by participants. The planned Q&A session after each lecture and the networking session after the main part of the event happened to be very engaging. During the event, the participants were given the opportunity of winning the GoPro Hero 8 webcam by answering one question: “In applications we often have a common database schema – both for Write and Read. What is the name of the approach that uses separate Read / Write models?”. The correct answer was Command Query Responsibility Segregation. The event showed us how important it is to return to offline meetings, which have been lacking in the past few years. We are already planning further ones for all programming enthusiasts. We hope to meet you there! Stay up to date with all the latest meetups and workshops we organize. Follow us on Linkedin, Facebook, and Instagram not to miss anything.
Despite its relative youth, the green technology market has attracted a considerable amount of interest. Some of the reasons for this are the growing consciousness about climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Going green and being eco-friendly is becoming more and more popular: not only when it comes to consumers but also organizations.
Many people think being green simply means recycling and turning off the lights but there is more to the topic. Especially when it comes to new technologies, where green tech has taken the lead. Green technology, cleantech, green software, environmental technology – if you have ever come across those terms and wondered what they were all about, this article is for you.
The term “green technology” refers to the use of technology and science to create environmentally friendly products and services. By combining environmental science with many innovative solutions, green tech helps prevent climate damage in the future and mitigate the damage already done by reducing or eliminating the sources of it.
Green tech, which can also be addressed as an environmental technology, concentrates on sustainable innovation which factors in short-term and long-term environmental effects. Over the years, green technology has also grown into a booming industry that has attracted huge amounts of capital.
How is green tech different from cleantech
Green tech entitles the utilization of technology in processes of sustainable forms of energy production, whereas cleantech specifically refers to the products and services that in their core reduce energy consumption, waste, cost and environmental impact.
The main goals of green tech
Essentially, green technology aims to protect and restore the environment, conserve natural resources, and restore the damage inflicted on it in the past. The main goal of green tech is to minimize the negative impact of new technologies on the planet by using clean energy (alternative fuel sources and technologies that do less harm than fossil fuels). However, it has additional goals that consist of:
Finding new ways to fulfill our needs while reducing our negative impact on the environment.
Using resources more efficiently, reducing waste, and reducing pollution.
Replacing existing technologies with new eco-friendly ones.
Introducing new green technologies and creating jobs to support them.
How are these green tech goals accomplished?
The goals mentioned above can be accomplished thanks to the activity of green tech companies that utilize science-based technologies and methodologies. The business models of such companies often incorporate financial, social, and environmental sustainability. Moreover, by making profit, green tech companies are able to sustain and scale their businesses as well as increase the positive impact they make on the planet while reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible. The reduction of corporate carbon emissions has become an important part of business strategies. As a result, a growing number of corporations took a pledge to become carbon neutral. Apple is an example of a company which has made a commitment to achieve 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2030 for its supply chain and products.
History of green tech
While green tech has gained popularity in the modern age, elements of these business practices date back to the Industrial Revolution. Scientists began to note the ecological impacts of coal-burning industrial plants in the early 19th century. Since then, manufacturers have tried to minimize the environmental damage by altering production processes to produce less soot. During the Second World War, one of the biggest milestones was observed in the United States. As part of the war effort, more than 400,000 volunteers collected metals, paper, rubber, and other materials. After the war, scientists and doctors all over the world began warning about dangers that came with chemical pesticides and nuclear radiation. For many, that era is believed to be the genesis of the ecological movement that we can continue to see today. As time went by, more and more government bodies recognized the importance of protecting environmental resources. During this time, awareness-raising programs on household waste became increasingly popular. Another breakthrough occurred in 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Its main accomplishments included establishing requirements for pollution and waste and mandating coal scrubbers as well as other clean technologies.
The most important areas of green tech
Some of the most important areas of green technology include:
Environmentally preferred purchasing
The policy of environmentally preferred purchasing entails purchasing goods that were made with energy-efficient methods.
Green building
Green building focuses on sustainability in the construction processes. It involves the use of environmentally friendly building materials, sustainable construction methods, as well as locating constructions in the most appropriate locations.
Green chemistry
In green chemistry, the goal is to design new chemicals that can replace those that have a negative impact on the environment.
Green nanotechnology
The primary aim of green nanotechnology is to produce new nanomaterials that minimize the negative impact we have on the planet.
Green energy production
One of the most well-known areas of green tech is green energy production. Using renewable energy sources, it is focused on developing new ways of generating electricity and fuel.
Green software
In the context of software, green tech means using solutions that have minimal impact on the environment. Green software makes it possible to implement needed changes in a quicker and more efficient manner. Microsoft created Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering which help establish if the software is really green. This document consists of a set of competencies for designing, building, and running sustainable software applications.
When does green tech actually come into play? Examples of green tech products in everyday use
Although we might not realize it, we are surrounded by green technology in almost every aspect of our lives. A few typical applications for green tech solutions include recycling wastewater, producing electricity through solar panels, and use of wind turbines. Electric vehicles, which reduce the very negative impact of gas vehicles, and cloud storage, which replaces hard drives that require a large amount of electricity, are other examples of cleantech solutions that are getting increasingly popular.
Nevertheless, we can also see that cleantech is very present in our immediate surroundings. LED lighting is a good example. LED bulbs consume less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and are commonly used in many households. This also applies to programmable thermostats, which are currently gaining traction. These low-cost green tech products make it possible to automate and schedule temperature adjustments, thus saving both energy and money.
The importance of environmental technology
Many studies have examined the negative impact humans have on the environment. Deforestation, pollution, overpopulation, and burning fossil fuels are some of the ways in which humans impact the physical environment. Such actions have dire consequences: climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water. Today, when so much technology surrounds us, it becomes more critical than ever that those environmental issues are taken seriously. Thanks to green tech, the environmental situation can be improved. Ultimately, the more environmentally friendly innovations we invent and use every day, the less polluted our planet will become. Using green technology, the problem of global warming can be solved, while creating clean energy and making the world a more sustainable place.
Benefits of green technology
Green tech has a lot of benefits. Below we share a list of the most important ones:
Green tech solutions don’t emit any harmful substances to the environment.
As the technology market grows and consumers become more environmentally conscious, cleantech products give them the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint and resource use.
It requires less cost for maintenance. As a result, the operating cost and hence overall cost in the long run can be decreased.
Green tech uses renewable natural resources which won’t ever run out.
The usage of green technology slows down the effects of global warming due to reduction in CO2 emissions.
The emergence of new green tech companies stimulates the economy by creating new jobs.
Disadvantages of green tech
Despite its long list of advantages, green technology is not without downsides. They consist of:
A very high initial investment or implementation cost.
The technology is still new to most people, so it will take some time for it to become commonly used.
Green technology is still advancing and many of the products are in the R&D stage.
The installation and implementation of green technology based systems and products are difficult due to the shortage of skilled human resources.
In most countries, green technology-based policies have not been finalized yet.
Software development in green technology: an example
As a software development company, we have worked on many green tech-related projects over the years. One of them was in cooperation with a Finnish company Ensto where our team delivered expertise in the latest trends and technology. Ensto produces charging stations for electric vehicles and was in need of updated software for an existing hardware system. Our designer created the interactive admin panel in Invision and handed it over to front end and back end developers to build the code base.
The update in the panel was especially important for Ensto’s end-clients who buy EV charging devices and want to track electricity usage. We built a modern and visually appealing front end for them. We mainly worked on the software for the electric vehicle charging stations. Each station collects vital usage data and compiles it in an intuitive display dashboard. You can find more details about this project here.
The state of green tech in 2022 and its future
The industry of green technology is constantly growing. As shared in the “Green Technology and Sustainability Market by Technology: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021–2030” report, in 2020, the global green technology and sustainability market size was valued at $10.32 billion and is projected to reach $74.64 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 21.9% from 2021 to 2030. Environmental awareness and the growing concern of organizations and individuals about global warming will only continue to enhance the growth of the green technology market. Furthermore, governments all over the world are starting to invest in green technology businesses to decarbonise the economy and make their countries more energy efficient. An example of such an initiative is the funding announced by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in the United Kingdom. In addition to carbon capture projects, the funding will be used to strengthen energy efficiency in UK homes and businesses by finding cleaner, greener ways to heat and power them. We predict that more and more funds like this will be established in the near future.
The IT sector is growing very fast and more and more people are interested in new technologies that affect our lives. The industry is always faced with new challenges and problems as it develops. If you want to know more about the IT industry, about coders, artificial intelligence, mathematics that surrounds us everywhere, you should certainly take a look at books mentioned in this article.
“Coders. The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World” by Clive Thompson
Have you ever heard a question “What do you really do as a software developer” at the family table? Has your friend ever asked you to repair her or his computer? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you should certainly let them read the book “Coders” – reportage written by Canadian freelance journalist Clive Thompson.
This story is a complex introduction to a world of new technologies and software developers; it answers questions about the programmers – why they are the way they are, why they are sometimes so frustrated and closed to other people. Thompson shows how powerful and intelligent they are, how they think and work. But this is not only the laurel for the developers. The author isn’t afraid of writing about the tough and bad sides of the IT industry. He shows that it is not only a place of nice hipsters smoking weed but there are many social problems like sexual harassment, racism, and nationalism. Thompson proves that the IT industry and career as a software developer is for everyone, for people of all genders, all nations and skin colors. The best summary of this theory is: “if a given tool is created by a team that is essentially homogeneous in terms of culture, it will have significant weaknesses – resulting from the failure to perceive certain aspects of representatives of this one culture.”
“Ada’s Algorithm. How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age through the Poetry of Numbers” by James Essinger
Ada Lovelace was a daughter of Lord Byron, the famous poet, but she didn’t follow in her father’s footsteps. She became well-known as a brilliant English mathematician. She wrote a publication about Charles Babbage’s mechanical general-purpose computer. Ada started to be known as the first computer programmer after she published the algorithm.
James Essinger in his book called “Ada’s Algorithm. How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age through the Poetry of Numbers” tells the fantastic story about Ada, her stubbornness in pursuing the goal and her analytical thinking. The book also tells the story of the very beginnings of computers, programming, and algorithms. It is even hard to believe that all of that happened in the early XIX century, almost 200 hundred years ago. This is a story about an amazing woman who not only proves her outstanding intelligence but also does it in a world dominated by men.
“Infinite Powers. How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe” by Steven Strogatz
When I was participating in my Mathematics course at the university, we had an exam about integrals and differentials. It was one of the most difficult exams in the first year of our studies. Some of us passed the exam on the first try, some of us passed the exam in the next attempts. I noticed that none of us, the ones who passed and didn’t pass the exam, didn’t really understand the integrals and differentials. We just knew how to solve exercises and remember the mathematical formulas. It changed when I read the book “Infinite Powers. How Calculus reveals the Secrets of the University” by Steven Strogatz.
The author explains the power of mathematics in a very simple way. He uses a lot of stories that help to understand what integral and differentials really are and how they affect everyday life. Without differential and integral calculus, there wouldn’t be mobile phones, television, we wouldn’t be able to disintegrate the atom or land on the Moon. If you want to understand mathematics and how it affects almost everything around us, you should definitely spend a weekend with Steven Strogatzs book.
“Hello world. How to be Human in the Age of the Machine” by Hannah Fry
We live in a technologically advanced age. It develops in a very fast way, the fastest way in the world’s history. About 30 years ago, mobile phones started to be popular, but the internet wasn’t as popular as it is now. We are witnesses of a great era, at least in context of fast evolution. But is everything going in the right direction?
Hannah Fry, the British mathematician, in her book “Hello World. How to be Human in the Age of the Machine” in a very good way describes technological progress in the last few years and also predicts what we should expect in the near future. Should we be afraid of the development of smart homes? Should we be afraid of autonomous cars? Should we be afraid of data leaks? In this book, you will find answers to these and many other questions. Hannah Fry wrote that this book is about who we are, where we are heading, what is important for us, and how everything changes thanks to the new technology. It is a book about our relations with algorithms, the ones which already exist and work with us everyday.
“American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road” by Nick Bilton
Last but not least, I wanted to write about “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road” written by Nick Bilton. The book tells the story of a man who started an online illegal drugs and guns shop on the Darknet. Ross Ulbricht wasn’t even a software developer, he was a radical libertarian who believed that online drug stores would decrease criminality. In his opinion, people who buy drugs on the streets would have an opportunity to order them online which might result in less gang shootings on the streets. Ulbricht didn’t have coding skills, he started the whole thing by reading tutorials on the web and creating his first store which was full of bugs and errors in security. The shop occured to be a good business and Ross Ulbricht became a millionaire in a very short time. The book written by Nick Bilton is a reportage but you can read it as an interesting crime story. It shows the study of insanity that pushes the boundaries further and further. To be honest, this is one of the best books I have recently had the opportunity to read.
All five books mentioned above are very good ones, written by leading journalists and scientists. You don’t need to have any technological knowledge in order to enjoy them. Especially if you are a software developer, project manager, ux designer or you just want to know more about the present and future world, you won’t be disappointed with these books.
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