Managing and monitoring medical data is incredibly complex, especially for the layman who won’t be able to understand the terminology. With the iOS 10 update rapidly approaching, both consumers and healthcare industries will have something to be excited about - the Apple HealthKit. The built-in health app allows you to save and manage medical records with just a simple tap of a button. But as you’ll soon find out, it has even more practical applications. Here are the capabilities that we can expect with the new update.

Medical records stored on your phone

With HealthKit, patients will be able to request and store their health information in the HL7 format, which is the standardized format used between healthcare providers and patients. While storing your own medical records in your phone isn’t new, the app will allow you to directly save your physician-created electronic medical record (EMR) data into the app.

This means you will have an updated version of your EMR with you at all times, which can be handy, especially if you are changing hospitals or physicians. Patients can simply share their standardized HL7 formatted records with another healthcare provider and upload the necessary data digitally to their physician, so they’ll be up-to-date on your medical history or any health issues. This also eliminates the need for you to coordinate between hospitals on the migration of your medical records.

By having an automated log of accurate medical information, healthcare providers can track patterns in the patient’s medical history that will allow them to quickly diagnose existing health issues.

Interpret cryptic medical data

Unlike other apps in the market, this built-in app is designed as a medium through which all your relevant medical data can be synced. Since your medical records are given to you in a raw XML file, the content stored within the document can seem intimidating. However, with data stored in a standardized format, applications can simply tap into the data, share information between different apps and display them in a format that you can easily interpret. For example, a fitness app like Nike+ Running will be able to accurately calculate calories burned because it has up-to-date information about your weight, height, body mass index, as well as other statistics. These apps can also take your EMR and display them on a chart to show any significant developments in your health.

Wearables

With the Apple Watch built-in pedometer, health records can also be automatically and consistently updated. This means things like blood pressure and heart rate can be easily monitored and applied to your EMR, without having to go to the doctor’s office for a checkup. At the end of the day, the potential for this new technology is still unknown, but it seems to be heading towards a clear direction - making EMR management more convenient for patients.

Contact us today if you are interested in learning more about the latest developments with Apple and their healthcare app.

If the longevity of a content management system’s (CMS) history is an important factor for you, Squarespace is one of the first and oldest. If ecommerce and analysis is an even bigger factor, they’re definitely for you. With their announcement and demonstration last week, Squarespace solidified itself as an excellent choice for SMBs focusing on internet-driven ecommerce. Read on for more details on how their new service helps you achieve better conversions.

Squarespace publicly admits that their earliest iterations of Commerce, the platform’s ecommerce tool, were targeted at businesses that didn’t see their online sales as their number one objective. Unsurprisingly, that mentality didn’t last long and the website creation company caved in to consumer demands for deeper functionality.

Squarespace Commerce originally did offer some data analysis via a service titled ‘Metrics’, but was recently granted a huge upgrade and the new title of ‘Advanced Analytics’. To access it, simply click ‘Analytics’ from the ‘Home Menu’ on your site. From there, you are taken to a dashboard that displays an overview of seven of your most important data points: Revenue, Units Sold, Orders, Visits, Conversion Rate, Average Order Volume and Revenue per Visit. You can see the performance of these variables over any period of time you set and exact values can be found by clicking on the graph wherever you need more specific information.

So far this isn’t anything that several other CMS platforms can offer you. What begins to set Squarespace Commerce apart is the ability to sift these seven data points by source. You can filter the indicators by sources such as device (desktop, mobile, tablet), site/social network (Google, Facebook, direct, etc.) or by specifying which product produced the data. Although, potentially the most helpful upgrade of all is the ‘Abandoned Checkout’ feature. As one of the biggest problems among ecommerce sites, Squarespace sets its sights on determining why your customers fail to finish their purchase in your online store. It does this by tracking data from all seven of the aforementioned data points and allowing you to create custom followup emails for anyone that has entered their email address and added items to their cart without finishing their purchase. The email can act as a simple reminder or even include a ‘Complete your Order’ call to action in the text of the message.

And since Squarespace is putting such a huge emphasis on data, there’s a whole tab under the Analytics menu titled ‘Purchase Funnel’ that allows you to see how far into the shopping process your customers get. You can compare the number of site visits to the number of users that viewed a product, added an item to a cart and completed a purchase, all in one screen. This will allow you to see where in your sales process you’re losing customer interest.

Of course with any announcement comes all of the finer details like adding templates for ecommerce websites, the addition of a mobile app that allows store managers to keep an eye on their ecommerce from mobile devices and an order delivery calculator.

Although Squarespace promises more availability of customer data is on the way, it still believes that business owners don’t want to be inundated with overly verbose data. Right now they want to focus on simple, key indicators that result in higher profits.

Nowadays the vast majority of SMBs will be offering at least one product or service for sale over the internet. There are a lot of different ways to go about it, but something as simple as improved conversion tracking or mobile management on your ecommerce store could become the reason your company is in the black, or the red. We’re well versed in all of the CMS vendors operating today and we’d love to help you find out which one is best for you -- ask us today!