ChartSpan’s medical app for iOS App Store has become the most downloaded U.S. medical app — at more than 200,000 total downloads — for the third straight year.
Available on Apple, Android and the web, the app gives consumers a convenient way to request, manage and send electronic health care records. The app is free, encrypted and secure.
Since 2014, the health care technology company has focused on improving patient engagement. Most health care apps have very low patient engagement, says Jon-Michial Carter, chief executive officer of ChartSpan. The company opened headquarters in Greenville in 2013 after being part of the NEXT team and graduating from Iron Yard Digital Healthcare Accelerator.
“The biggest users of our consumer products are mothers who use our products to manage their entire families’ health care records and information,” Carter says. “They use ChartSpan to manage immunization, physicals and medical information for their children, with the ability to request, receive and send those records all within ChartSpan.”
People with chronic illnesses are the second biggest user segment for the app, Carter notes. “If you’ve got multiple doctors, labs, prescriptions, etc., you need one single place to manage everything,” he says.
After receiving $3.2 million in funding from a Texas-based syndicate, ChartSpan recently announced plans to expand to encompass nearly 100,000 square feet on North Main Street, downtown in Greenville, and hire more than 300 new employees.
Competitors of ChartSpan’s app include MyChart from Epic and Healow from eClinicalWorks. One of the competition’s limitations is that patients might have to log into different mobile apps or portals, depending on which doctors they visit. ChartSpan’s app manages health care records from any doctor for any patient, Carter says.
Marketing a new app directly to consumers is hard, as the marketplace is crammed with many options, Carter says.
“Our marketing team is executing dozens of parallel strategies, at any one time, designed to ensure ChartSpan gets noticed,” he says. “Those strategies include app store search, demographic targeting and unique branding.”
But marketing success ultimately is achieved through user referrals and going viral, Carter says. “If you delight the consumer with a fantastic user experience when they download your app, they’ll tell their mother, brother and friends about your product.”
