Do you know that by the end of 2025, India alone will have 17 million obese children? Not only this, obesity will shoot diseases like Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, and Hepatic Steatosis!
These stats are frightening, aren’t they?
Can a successful Nutrition App development do something about this? Keep reading on to know more!
Introduction
“Health is Wealth” is a very old saying emphasizing on the importance of good health. To gain good health you need to be active, aware, and alert of your surroundings. Timely prevention is the need of the hour. As responsible citizens, we need to take steps to prevent our coming generations from falling prey to this lifestyle.
Another saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” turns out to lose its relevance when all the Jacks are busy in their hectic work schedules! We are already tired by the end of the day and don’t think twice before dropping the idea of hitting the gym or going for a run. Fast foods and other beverages have replaced the home cooked food.
We are continuously accumulating a lot of fats, calories, and carbohydrates on ourselves without analyzing their long-term consequences. We can hardly burn the 1/10th portion of our daily consumption. In a pan-India survey by Gympik, it came out that around 53% of Indians lack the discipline and motive to stay fit. This is where healthcare mobile app developers take control of the situation.
Can a Smartphone App make a Difference?
Smartphone apps have drastically changed the way we used to live earlier. From groceries to banking, you can literally find an app for everything. The high-speed internet and convenience of mobile phone everywhere have significantly changed the world. Mobile apps already had and can make a lot of difference in our lives:
- Instant Information: The phrase “just Google it” holds special relevance in our day to day lives. It is the mobile apps that allow you to search the content instantly anywhere, anytime. Apps are reported to be 1.5 times faster as compared to websites and perform actions at a faster pace too. Human minds are inquisitive and smartphone applications serve as an instant relief for this inquisitiveness.
- Instant Connection & Communication: Mobile phones and the internet have made this world a small place. There are ample of apps that allow a person to instantly connect and communicate another person living miles away. Apps have played a vital role in helping us in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
- Better Productivity: According to a report released by Accenture, business employees acknowledge the fact that smartphone apps play a critical role in their smooth business operations. Earlier people can access professional emails and messages from office computers only. Now with the help of various apps and an internet connection they can check their emails and messages from anywhere in the world. Even if you’re holidaying with your family, you can stay connected with your business updates with just a simple tap. This will contribute to your productivity as well.
- Simplified Daily Tasks: Our daily lives are more sorted out now as compared to 10 years ago. By the end of 2018, around 36% of Indians use smartphones in India. Activities like purchasing movie tickets, flight bookings, banking, etc. have become much more convenient now. These have successfully eliminated the need to physically do a work which is a boon in these high traffic times. These apps are a huge time saver, making lives super easy for us.
What do Users expect from a Health and Nutrition App?
On average a person uses 9 apps in a day
. The ever-busy users completely depend on health and nutrition apps for their healthy weight and fitness. These apps can prove to be a great companion for such people. Mobile apps are useful for all users of different age groups and play a crucial role in their exercising and daily workout. Usually, a user has following expectations from a good health and nutrition app:
- Useful food intake suggestion
- Preparation of a diet chart
- Tracking the daily calorie intake
- Keeping a record of water consumption
- Physical activity monitoring
- Shopping list assistance
- Keeping a check on weight loss, fat and carbohydrate intake
Essential Features that should be incorporated in Nutrition App development
Planning to launch your own smartphone health and nutrition app? Consider some important features to add value to your app!
- Personal Accounts and Registration: Personalization is the key feature of every health and nutrition app. If a user can feed his personal health details and can get suitable advice, what more they can ask for? Make sure you have a feature to gather and analyze every user’s data pertaining to his or her weight, age, eating habits, allergies, level of physical activity, weight goals, and so on.
- Food Logging and Dashboard: A top-notch health and nutrition app should have a duly designed dashboard and a food logging feature. You need to prepare a database consisting of all diet information in it like calories, food intake, energy proportion, hydration meter and so on. It is almost impossible to develop this database on your own so why not use a ready-made API for this purpose? You can get this application programming interface for free. All you need to do is fill a form on the respective company’s website and wait for the approval. Simple isn’t it?
Important Tip: Make your app more colourful and visually appealing containing the best of information.
- Push Notifications: Push notifications hold a special relevance in smartphone apps. If you too wish to go for a healthcare mobile app development make sure you don’t lag behind in this! Install this feature to remind your users for their upcoming meal and motivate them to achieve their health and nutrition goals. Control the frequency of notifications as it can easily annoy the users.
- Fitness Tracker: Integrating your health and nutrition app with a couple of fitness trackers is a great idea. A tracker can help the users in tracking their own pace and will encourage them to achieve more. This will also save them from manually feeding all the information in the app. Calorie count display from activities such as cycling, jogging, etc. will enhance the popularity of your app.
- Easy: The last feather in your healthcare mobile app development is to make your app more accessible to a larger section of users by making it easy to use. Many times, app developers focus on developing an app which is too technical for users to operate. As a result, they prefer to uninstall it. Make sure you make your app simple yet an advanced one with easy log/sign in and easy customization!
- Diet Suggestion: Being into nutrition app development domain you main objective should be to advise your users about some important health and nutrition suggestions. Since this app allows personalization, a separate section can be included offering a wide range of options according to diet plans.
- Multi-Device Synchronization: If you wish to register your app into the bandwagon of smart apps, try connecting it some wearable and third-party devices like Android Wear, Fitbit, Apple Watch, etc. This will enable your users to track their health parameters throughout the day.
- Statistics: You can earn some brownie points by adding a statistics feature to your app. Users like to witness their stats in graphs like distance covered everyday till date, daily steps, calories burned everyday, etc. Make sure you choose interesting, colourful and readable stats for your app. Pie charts, graphs, animation can be part of this feature. Because you wouldn’t like your users to get perplexed or disheartened with the numbers!
- Apple HealthKit and Google Fit: Gone were the days when health and diet apps used to depend on the embedded utilities of the device. Now both Apple HealthKit and Google Fit allow an exchange of crucial data with the help of APIs.
What is the Cost of Developing a Health and Nutrition App?
It is not an easy task to evaluate the total cost of an app. Most of Nutrition App development companies charge on an hourly basis and each section has a different development time. Another factor that affects the total cost of an app is the geographical location of the app development company. For example, in India, an app development company will charge somewhere around $20 to $80. While in the US you will be required to pay around $50 to $250 for the same work.
Conclusion
Being fit and healthy is the need of the hour and we cannot afford to take it lightly anymore. The main issue in maintaining a perfect work-life balance is the lack of knowledge. People are unaware of how much is good and where they need to stop. Internet and healthcare mobile app developers have a big role to play in this. So why not take optimum advantage of this opportunity.
With some easy features and tips, you can make your app an instant hit among the users. So what are you waiting for? Start your healthcare app development and planning today to help people around the world stay fit and healthy. You never know if this can be your payback to society!
