With a mobile app it is possible to make notes anywhere
The HealthApp is a mobile app used by farm staff and veterinarians. Animal Health ETT commissioned the app from Mtech because the organisation needed a simple tool to record veterinary medications and treatments to their cattle healthcare register Naseva.
Mtech, a long-term companion of ETT, has also implemented the Naseva register. Mtech is very familiar with the needs of its customer, and was thus able to suggest making a mobile app for ETT in 2018. A pilot user group tested the app the same year in the autumn, and the next spring it was already in use.
Capturing data right where the animals are, the producer need not take separate notes and later save them on a computer.
”The best thing about NasevaHealthApp is that you always carry the phone with you, so the individual treatments will be recorded immediately”, says Paula Halkosaari, Naseva register manager at ETT. Handy is the best word to describe the solution, according to what she has heard from the users.
Recording a treatment, the user has to select the treated individual from a list, and then select the treatment and medication. The most frequent choices can be arranged to the top of the list, which makes the recording faster. If the solution is used offline, it saves the data in the device memory and sends them to the database when the device goes online again. The solution also makes automatic backup copies.
The NasevaHealthApp has no device limitations; it works in both Android and Apple phones. The app is simple, so its development did not take a long time.
The same type of solution could be used in many other fields. For example, show and trial evaluations for horses and dogs could be recorded on a similar app. Wherever data is recorded twice, usually first in the production plant, and then again in the office, there would usually be advantage from this kind of an app. The app allows to avoid double recording.
Although most browser-based programmes are scalable to different devices, sometimes the use of a separate mobile app enhances the usability of software. These cases include recording simple data and doing selections from a list. Mobile apps also make it possible to make use of the standard functions of the phone such as dictation mode at recording free text.