Author: admin

I am ambitious and driven. I thrive on challenge and constantly set goals for myself, so I have something to strive towards. I’m not comfortable with settling, and I’m always looking for an opportunity to do better and achieve greatness. In my previous role, I was promoted three times in less than two years

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Essential Features to Build the Best Health Insurance App

With the digitalization of health care, mobile apps have transformed and leveraged by the health insurance sector. Today, it is indispensable to have a mobile application for an insurance company to meet the expectations of tech-savvy millennials and compete with their competitors digitally. Using the web or mobile healthcare app, will make the healthcare facilities readily accessible and save precious time of the medical fraternity, especially doctors and the patients. Health Insurance Mobile apps are a great tool to harness the collective insights and power of remote and onsite workplace, help in better decision making and provide real-time outputs, to boost the business efficiency and profit.

With an increasing demand in the aging population in the U.S., the healthcare industry revenue is expected to rise. With the outbreak of COVID-19, the largest companies are ready to cover the expenditure related to the testing and treatment of COVID-19. An influx of patients with COVID-19 symptoms will rise in the coming days, and it will eventually lead to an increase in the expenses related to medical insurance apps benefits. It will impact the profit margins for the health insurance companies. According to IBIS World, “The Health and Medical Insurance in the U.S. industry trends (2015-2020): Average industry growth 2015-2020: 2.9%.” Despite revenue growth, the increase in medical cost and new legislation mandates for minimum medical loss ratios, leading to more pressure on industry profit.

Medical and health insurance companies, to increase their business profit, need to create robust, secured, intuitive, and user-friendly apps to attract maximum clients, and do a profitable business. Generally, people using the best insurance app, and especially at the time of the pandemic, are impatient and want instant response and assistance regarding their query, regarding an insurance notification. Major Health Insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group, Anthem, Humana Group, Aetna, etc. are having the benefit of using a Health Insurance app.

Challenges faced by the Health Insurance Sector

Health Insurance is a lucrative sector, but some challenges are faced by private insurers who are still following the traditional approach to deal with their clients. People are adopting digital platforms for all their day-to-day activities and prefer opting for smart and quick solutions for their health-related needs as well. Today, patients are desperate to switch to health insurance mobile apps as all the information, from doctors to the best insurance plan, etc., everything is just a click away. Some of the challenges faced by the Health Insurance app are as follows:

Excessive use of paper
Long queues for appointment
Wastage of time to avail the policy
Hard to select the best suitable policy
Disorganized health care system
Difficult to find the best Doctor
So, when you are planning to switch your services to best health insurance apps, you must provide a solution to all the above challenges, to make the end-users steer through easily with a few taps. The aim of the developer should be to create an intuitive, secured, feature-rich, and user-friendly app that will benefit the insurer by attracting maximum loyal clients for achieving business benefits.

Features of a Health Insurance App

To gain a competitive edge over your business rivals, it is essential to switch from the traditional methods to the digital platform to woo your patients. Here is a list of essential features your health insurance app must have to make it the most preferred app for your patients and recommended by doctors as well.

1. Offer suitable plans

To initiate the journey of your clients, the first step is to offer them various good options so that they can choose their best suitable plan according to their needs. A well-designed app allows users to make their choice easily. For example, providing a short questionnaire or form to the users to gather their basic information can be used to offer the most suitable plan according to their needs.

2. Purchasing or Renewing Policies

Everyone wants to make the best decision, and your app should act as a platform for the same. The real benefit of the Health insurance app is when users can identify and purchase their perfect policy. At times, people need to purchase a policy at another qualifying life event, like at the birth or death of a family member. The traditional approach to buy or renew an insurance policy has always been time-consuming and challenging. A good app acts as an aid to decide their most-suited plan in a short period.

3. Easy Payment Options

At times, clients forget to make their monthly or annual payments and may end us being paying heavy dues later. One of the main advantages of using the digital app is to offer automated payment options to clients so that neither the client nor the insurer has to face any penalties due to delayed payments. A secure payment gateway can be integrated into the app for automatic payment from the client to the health insurance app provider, monthly or annually, as per requirement. This eliminates the fear of losing coverage on the insurance policy, as there will be no delay in making payments. By integrating with a payment gateway, patients can also pay the doctor’s bills conveniently, immediately after their appointment.

4. Finding the best Doctors

Users can get a complete list of specialist doctors so that they can choose them according to their illness. Also, at times, an app can provide a team of concierges who analyze the symptoms and directs the patients to the specialists accordingly. Different filters can be added to help the users look for doctors in a particular area, or a particular illness, or for simply search for doctors by their name.

5. Booking an Appointment

This feature plays a key role in attracting many users to your health insurance app, as they can visit the doctors according to their scheduled appointment, and they can save ample time waiting in queues. A user-friendly calendar with easy navigation can help users to book their appointment based on the availability of dates and time-slots.

6. Search for Drugs

Health Insurance companies can tie up with pharmacies so that patients can search for the nearby pharmacy, where their prescribed medicine is available. Medicine delivery at the doorstep can also be provided to the clients.

7. Symptom Checker

This feature has been widely used in medical apps, but now, it has become crucial with the outbreak of coronavirus. A simple questionnaire or form can enquire about the patient’s health, and based on that; they can be directed to the specialist doctor. It will also help in pre-diagnosis and save the time of doctors and the patient at the time of appointment.

8. Document access

Health Insurance app acts as a reservoir of all the essential health documents related to the insurance policy and their lab reports. Instead of looking out for papers in the cupboards, the user can easily fetch reports with a few taps on their phone. Users, if required, can share reports with their doctors through their phones, without visiting them personally. The app should have strong encryption so that the data is completely secured.

9. Reminders

At times, patients forget their follow up visits. By implementing push notifications, the app can remind them of their next visit to the doctor. Also, important dates of claims processing, insurance expiration dates, and other important events are shared with the users through timed push notifications.

10. FAQs

At times, people who are using the Health Insurance for the first time may have some doubts. A section of Frequently Asked Questions, allows users to clear their thoughts and make decisions wisely by knowing more about different scenarios and insurance policies.

11. Support Team

Patients and users purchasing or renewing health insurance policies should be able to talk to the Support team so that they can decide wisely before making any investment. The members of the support team should be patient listeners and qualified to understand and guide them in the best way.

The features mentioned above of the Health Insurance App are essential to attract and build strong, long-lasting relationships with the clients. The Health Insurance App development company should also focus on the medical regulatory guidelines so that they can be used for both public and private insurance. The sudden emergence of pandemic COVID-19 has compelled people to opt for best Health Insurance policies, and it is sure that by creating a robust, secured, user-friendly Health Insurance App, companies can make lucrative business gains in the coming years.

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21 Reasons to Eat Real Food

Real food is whole, single-ingredient food.

It is mostly unprocessed, free of chemical additives, and rich in nutrients.

In essence, it’s the type of food human beings ate exclusively for thousands of years.

However, since processed foods became popular in the 20th century, the Western diet has shifted toward ready-to-eat meals.

While processed foods are convenient, they also harm your health. In fact, following a diet based on real food may be one of the most important things you can do to maintain good health and a high quality of life.

Here are 21 reasons to eat real food.

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22 seriously good reasons to go swimming

It’s a lifesaving skill

We thought we’d start with one that may be obvious but is potentially the best reason of all to go swimming – it’s a lifesaving skill!

By swimming regularly, whether for fitness or pleasure, you keep the skill fresh in your mind and without even realising it, every time you swim you strengthen the muscles and therefore become a stronger, slightly more skilled swimmer, ready for when you really need it.

It tones your muscles

So now onto one of the most popular benefits. Swimming is a really great, yet fairly easy way to tone up.

Here’s the science bit; water is 784 times denser than air, so swimming is a very effective way of toning your muscles, more than any other form of cardiovascular exercise done on land. Working out in water provides resistance, which has the similar effect as using weights; however, submersion in water creates an even, controlled resistance on the body, perfect for those who are not confident with lifting weights.

It is also a great cardio workout – aiding weight loss

Aside from toning, swimming also provides a good cardiovascular workout – cardiovascular, or “cardio”, means your heart really gets pumping which is good for heart health, making you fitter and burning calories, thus enabling weight loss.

It burns lots of calories – aiding weight loss

Swimming for just half an hour can burn up to 250 calories and seeing as a standard Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar has 240 calories in it – do you need any more of a reason to swim?

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The Top 10 Benefits of Regular Exercise

Interestingly, it doesn’t matter how intense your workout is. It seems that your mood can benefit from exercise no matter the intensity of the physical activity.

In fact, a study in 24 women who had been diagnosed with depression showed that exercise of any intensity significantly decreased feelings of depression (3Trusted Source).

The effects of exercise on mood are so powerful that choosing to exercise (or not) even makes a difference over short periods.

One study asked 26 healthy men and women who normally exercised regularly to either continue exercising or stop exercising for two weeks. Those who stopped exercising experienced increases in negative mood (4Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Exercising regularly can improve your mood and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
2. It Can Help With Weight Loss
Some studies have shown that inactivity is a major factor in weight gain and obesity (5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).

To understand the effect of exercise on weight reduction, it is important to understand the relationship between exercise and energy expenditure.

Your body spends energy in three ways: digesting food, exercising and maintaining body functions like your heartbeat and breathing.

While dieting, a reduced calorie intake will lower your metabolic rate, which will delay weight loss. On the contrary, regular exercise has been shown to increase your metabolic rate, which will burn more calories and help you lose weight (5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source).

Additionally, studies have shown that combining aerobic exercise with resistance training can maximize fat loss and muscle mass maintenance, which is essential for keeping the weight off (6Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source, 9Trusted Source, 10, 11Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Exercise is crucial to supporting a fast metabolism and burning more calories per day. It also helps you maintain your muscle mass and weight loss.

3. It Is Good for Your Muscles and Bones
Exercise plays a vital role in building and maintaining strong muscles and bones.

Physical activity like weight lifting can stimulate muscle building when paired with adequate protein intake.

This is because exercise helps release hormones that promote the ability of your muscles to absorb amino acids. This helps them grow and reduces their breakdown (12Trusted Source, 13Trusted Source).

As people age, they tend to lose muscle mass and function, which can lead to injuries and disabilities. Practicing regular physical activity is essential to reducing muscle loss and maintaining strength as you age (14Trusted Source).

Also, exercise helps build bone density when you’re younger, in addition to helping prevent osteoporosis later in life (15Trusted Source).

Interestingly, high-impact exercise, such as gymnastics or running, or odd-impact sports, such as soccer and basketball, have been shown to promote a higher bone density than non-impact sports like swimming and cycling (16Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Physical activity helps you build muscles and strong bones. It may also help prevent osteoporosis.
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4. It Can Increase Your Energy Levels
Exercise can be a real energy booster for healthy people, as well as those suffering from various medical conditions (17Trusted Source, 18Trusted Source).

One study found that six weeks of regular exercise reduced feelings of fatigue for 36 healthy people who had reported persistent fatigue (19Trusted Source).

Furthermore, exercise can significantly increase energy levels for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other serious illnesses (20Trusted Source, 21Trusted Source).

In fact, exercise seems to be more effective at combating CFS than other treatments, including passive therapies like relaxation and stretching, or no treatment at all (20Trusted Source).

Additionally, exercise has been shown to increase energy levels in people suffering from progressive illnesses, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis (21Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Engaging in regular physical activity can increase your energy levels. This is true even in people with persistent fatigue and those suffering from serious illnesses.
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5. It Can Reduce Your Risk of Chronic Disease
Lack of regular physical activity is a primary cause of chronic disease (22Trusted Source).

Regular exercise has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular fitness and body composition, yet decrease blood pressure and blood fat levels (23Trusted Source, 24Trusted Source, 25Trusted Source, 26Trusted Source).

In contrast, a lack of regular exercise — even in the short term — can lead to significant increases in belly fat, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and early death (23Trusted Source).

Therefore, daily physical activity is recommended to reduce belly fat and decrease the risk of developing these diseases (27Trusted Source, 28Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Daily physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy weight and reducing the risk of chronic disease.

6. It Can Help Skin Health
Your skin can be affected by the amount of oxidative stress in your body.

Oxidative stress occurs when the body’s antioxidant defenses cannot completely repair the damage that free radicals cause to cells. This can damage their internal structures and deteriorate your skin.

Even though intense and exhaustive physical activity can contribute to oxidative damage, regular moderate exercise can increase your body’s production of natural antioxidants, which help protect cells (29Trusted Source, 30Trusted Source).

In the same way, exercise can stimulate blood flow and induce skin cell adaptations that can help delay the appearance of skin aging (31Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Moderate exercise can provide antioxidant protection and promote blood flow, which can protect your skin and delay signs of aging.
7. It Can Help Your Brain Health and Memory
Exercise can improve brain function and protect memory and thinking skills.

To begin with, it increases your heart rate, which promotes the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain.

It can also stimulate the production of hormones that can enhance the growth of brain cells.

Moreover, the ability of exercise to prevent chronic disease can translate into benefits for your brain, since its function can be affected by these diseases (32).

Regular physical activity is especially important in older adults since aging — combined with oxidative stress and inflammation — promotes changes in brain structure and function (33Trusted Source, 34Trusted Source).

Exercise has been shown to cause the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s vital for memory and learning, to grow in size. This serves to increase mental function in older adults (33Trusted Source, 34Trusted Source, 35Trusted Source).

Lastly, exercise has been shown to reduce changes in the brain that can cause Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia (36Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Regular exercise improves blood flow to the brain and helps brain health and memory. Among older adults, it can help protect mental function.
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8. It Can Help With Relaxation and Sleep Quality
Regular exercise can help you relax and sleep better (37Trusted Source, 38Trusted Source).

In regards to sleep quality, the energy depletion that occurs during exercise stimulates recuperative processes during sleep (38Trusted Source).

Moreover, the increase in body temperature that occurs during exercise is thought to improve sleep quality by helping it drop during sleep (39Trusted Source).

Many studies on the effects of exercise on sleep have reached similar conclusions.

One study found that 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week can provide up to a 65% improvement in sleep quality (40).

Another showed that 16 weeks of physical activity increased sleep quality and helped 17 people with insomnia sleep longer and more deeply than the control group. It also helped them feel more energized during the day (41Trusted Source).

What’s more, engaging in regular exercise seems to be beneficial for the elderly, who tend to be affected by sleep disorders (41Trusted Source, 42Trusted Source, 43Trusted Source).

You can be flexible with the kind of exercise you choose. It appears that either aerobic exercise alone or aerobic exercise combined with resistance training can equally help sleep quality (44Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Regular physical activity, regardless of whether it is aerobic or a combination of aerobic and resistance training, can help you sleep better and feel more energized during the day.
9. It Can Reduce Pain
Chronic pain can be debilitating, but exercise can actually help reduce it (45Trusted Source).

In fact, for many years, the recommendation for treating chronic pain was rest and inactivity. However, recent studies show that exercise helps relieve chronic pain (45Trusted Source).

A review of several studies indicates that exercise helps participants with chronic pain reduce their pain and improve their quality of life (45Trusted Source).

Several studies show that exercise can help control pain that’s associated with various health conditions, including chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia and chronic soft tissue shoulder disorder, to name a few (46Trusted Source).

Additionally, physical activity can also raise pain tolerance and decrease pain perception (47Trusted Source, 48Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Exercise has favorable effects on the pain that’s associated with various conditions. It can also increase pain tolerance.
10. It Can Promote a Better Sex Life
Exercise has been proven to boost sex drive (49Trusted Source, 50, 51).

Engaging in regular exercise can strengthen the cardiovascular system, improve blood circulation, tone muscles and enhance flexibility, all of which can improve your sex life (49Trusted Source, 51).

Physical activity can improve sexual performance and sexual pleasure, as well as increase the frequency of sexual activity (50, 52Trusted Source).

A group of women in their 40s observed that they experienced orgasms more frequently when they incorporated more strenuous exercise, such as sprints, boot camps and weight training, into their lifestyles (53Trusted Source).

Also, among a group of 178 healthy men, the men that reported more exercise hours per week had higher sexual function scores (50).

One study found that a simple routine of a six-minute walk around the house helped 41 men reduce their erectile dysfunction symptoms by 71% (54Trusted Source).

Another study performed in 78 sedentary men revealed how 60 minutes of walking per day (three and a half days per week, on average) improved their sexual behavior, including frequency, adequate functioning and satisfaction (55Trusted Source).

What’s more, a study demonstrated that women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, which can reduce sex drive, increased their sex drive with regular resistance training for 16 weeks (56Trusted Source).

SUMMARY:
Exercise can help improve sexual desire, function and performance in men and women. It can also help decrease the risk of erectile dysfunction in men.
The Bottom Line
Exercise offers incredible benefits that can improve nearly every aspect of your health from the inside out.

Regular physical activity can increase the production of hormones that make you feel happier and help you sleep better.

It can also improve your skin’s appearance, help you lose weight and keep it off, lessen the risk of chronic disease and improve your sex life.

Whether you practice a specific sport or follow the guideline of 150 minutes of activity per week, you will inevitably improve your health in many ways (57Trusted Source).

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45 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog

Starting a blog for the first time is an amazing, yet intimidating experience.

Thinking that people are actually going to read – and even share – something you wrote. It’s unlike any other feeling I can describe.

But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. Starting a blog is hard work, and there are a lot of pitfalls along the way. Especially if it’s your first time.

So many pitfalls, in fact, that we’ve come up with a full list of 45 things we wish we knew before starting our first blogs. That way, you don’t have to make these mistakes yourself!

But who are “we” exactly, right? Well, this post is a group effort. It features three bloggers chipping in and sharing their best advice on how to start a blog, and not only that, but how to start a successful blog and make money from it as well. 🤑

So grab a coffee and get cozy, we’re about to review everything we’ve learned in the past 8+ years. Enjoy!

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20 reasons why you should start a blog in 2020

I think pretty much every year, someone somewhere writes that ‘blogging is dead’ – and yet year after year that proves to be the complete opposite of the truth.

Blogging is most definitely still alive and kicking – and will be throughout 2020 and beyond!

In fact, in my opinion blogging just keeps getting better and better. It’s no longer a simple online diary, but your ticket to a fulfilling career, incredible opportunities and huge amounts of self-development and personal growth.

Personally, I can hand on heart say blogging has transformed my life – it’s given me a career I love, a job I can do flexibly around my children, increased confidence, a plethora of new skills, the opportunity to make a difference in the world and a whole bunch of new friends. Plus, the huge amounts of happiness that come from having all those things.

If you are contemplating starting a blog in 2020, then I really encourage you to stop thinking about it and start doing it. It will almost certainly be one of the best decisions of your life.

Here are 20 reasons why you should start a blog in 2020…

1. GIVES YOU A CREATIVE OUTLET
It’s a bit of a cliché, I’ll grant you – but it still holds true. Blogging gives you a creative outlet to share your thoughts, ideas and passions. It’s rather like having your own magazine, where you are both the writer and the editor. You get to decide what goes into your online magazine AND you get to write all the articles too. Your creativity and personality are not curbed by a boss or an editor – you have the creative freedom to write what you like.

2. IMPROVES YOUR WRITING SKILLS
Writing a blog post or two each week has an amazing effect on your writing skills. It’s like with all skills – the more you do it the better you get at it. When go back now and look at some of the blog posts I wrote back when I started in 2015, I cringe – yet at the time I thought they were fine! This rather stark comparison makes it very clear to me just how much I’ve grown as a writer.