Promoting Hospitals’ Brand Reputation through Mobile Apps. A Quantitative Analysis about the Best Hospitals in Spain

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate how hospitals manage mobile applications to reinforce their relations with patients and promote their brands. To do that, we conducted a literature review about hospitals’ corporate communication, their branding initiatives, and their use of mobile apps for this purpose; then, we defined 36 indica-tors to quantitively analyze how the 150 best hospitals in Spain managed mobile apps to promote their brands: on-line integration, global app for patients, mobile apps for other targets, and mobile apps for patients facing non com-municable diseases. We concluded that hospitals should follow a public health and branding logic to develop mobile apps that contribute to establish a new communication paradigm among these organizations and their patients.