One of the main goals of medical practices and practitioners is to serve as their patients’ trusted source for high-quality care. As technology has made it easier for patients to find medical information online, providers must work harder than ever to ensure their patients have access to accurate information.
One of the best ways to do that is to encourage patients to use their provider’s website as the first resource to find medical resources and care advice. If your medical website design does not focus on easy navigation and your pages do not host content that is helpful to the user, however, your patients will quickly turn to other sources of information. To help provide valuable and accurate medical information to your patients, here are some of the best virtual tools to include on your medical website.
Table of Contents
Visual Symptom Checker
When it comes to feeling ill, it can be hard to tell if symptoms require a day of bed rest or an in-person visit to the doctor. A visual symptom checker is an easy-to-use tool that allows patients to learn about common causes of their symptoms, read suggestions for care, and make informed decisions about an appointment or managing their symptoms at home. A visual symptom checker will also offer guidance as to what individuals should do if their symptoms worsen, which can be an important step in preventing serious illness. For parents, a visual symptom checker is a great tool for providing comfort and care advice for ill children. By providing patients with potential diagnoses as soon as symptoms are noticed, visual symptom checkers can help individuals start on the path to recovery quickly.
You should also ensure that the visual symptom checker is easy to navigate and accessible to all patients.
Covid-19 Self-Assessment
A more recent addition to the virtual tools a medical practice can incorporate on their website, a Covid-19 self-assessment tool is vital to community health. This virtual tool allows patients to evaluate symptoms to determine if they may be exhibiting signs of a Covid infection. This information allows users to make informed decisions about quarantine and notifying potential close contacts. By allowing individuals to check their symptoms at home, a Covid-19 self-assessment tool can also help to keep both healthy and at-risk individuals safe. Rather than potentially infecting those around them by traveling for a Covid test, those who have used the self-assessment tool can inform their providers of their results, receive advice on steps they should take to keep those around them safe, and curb the spread of the virus.
Medication Dosage Tool
It’s important to only take the recommended amount of a given drug. A dosage calculator can help patients ensure that they are taking the right dosage of a drug, and can even provide information about which prescription and over-the-counter drug combinations to avoid. Dosage tools are especially helpful for pediatricians to provide to patients, as dosages for children can change based on age and weight. When paired with a visual symptom checker, a medical dosage tool can be a great way to empower parents to take the care of their child in their own hands.
Encourage the good health of your patients and your community with these virtual tools but remember that having such tools available to patients is only half the battle won. While these tools are easy to implement on most medical websites, it’s important that your patients be aware of how these tools can help them maintain their good health. Medical website SEO that focuses on creating content to explain the tools available to your patients, how to use them, and how they help patients reach better health outcomes is a key pairing for each tool you implement. By embracing good medical website design and focusing on SEO, you can ensure that these tools are findable on your site and easy to use.
