The big fuss these days are tablets and more specifically the iPad. Did you get one of the New Apple iPad’s? We’ve talked to a number of Eye Care Professionals who say they think they need an app. One of the first questions we ask in return is….”to do what?”
Here in Denver, and from what I understand across metropolitan areas around the country, there are billboards with a changing digital timer showing emergency room wait times at advertising hospitals. Does any rational person think for one minute should something terrible happen and a family need to take a loved one to an emergency room, they will go out of their way to read that one hospital’s sign to see what the wait time for that particular emergency room is? Or for that matter, do a Google search and compare various hospitals online to compare emergency room wait times? Open an App (if one existed) to do the same search, or drive as fast as safely possible to their nearest emergency room to save their loved one? The fact that technology exists to do something doesn’t mean we should use it, nor does it mean our potential customers will use it.
There have been some products promoted around the optical community promoting Apps for scheduling eye exams. The ones I’ve seen look very well constructed with most of the necessary features to make them useful and helpful. The question remains, who would ever download it and use it? Most people get their eyes examined every two years despite our communities efforts to promote a yearly exam. Who would download an app they would use every two years….or for those of us who have adopted annual exams, an app we would use once a year? Many of us will replace our mobile phones before we ever use that App a second time.
Technology can do a lot of wonderful things. We can measure PD’s now with greater accuracy than ever before. We can finish lenses to such exacting standards that we are making “personalized” lenses that truly fit one person’s eyes out of a population of 7 billion. That’s true customization. A successful App is more than just a useful program or link. It should be something people will want to use. Just as the example above about emergency room wait times illustrates, technology should be more than just being able to do something….that something should be something useful for the greatest number of your patients/customers.
Your technology dollars are much better spent updating your website to be mobile friendly, to invest time and dollars into your social media efforts, to even putting an online scheduling module into your website that can be reached from any computer, any time, without downloading an App.
