At St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City, chief information officer Deborah Gash takes a universal approach when it comes to mobile healthcare.

She also thinks giving patients more ways to connect with St. Luke’s hospitals and doctors on their smartphone or tablet is good for business—the prime reason St. Luke’s is overhauling its mobile healthcare program, consolidating multiple apps into a single updated version and rolling out more features and functions.

Later this summer St. Luke’s, a non-profit hospital network in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri that traces its history to 1882, will roll out a newly updated and comprehensive mobile app that will integrate the hospital’s multiple mobile apps into a single version which will connect patients, employees and visitors to the hospital’s core services and information they need when visiting a Saint Luke’s location, she says.

Through a single app St. Luke’s patients will be able to manage their health information online through the hospital’s MyChart portal, schedule telehealth services, navigate the main hospital and order food and beverages from the cafeteria.

“We needed a single user interface that would launch other capabilities and optimize the user’s mobile experience,” Gash says.

Because the healthcare system’s information technology staff doesn’t include app developers, Saint Luke’s decided to hire mobile technology vendor VenueNext to develop the new app.

VenueNext  has developed mobile apps for several major sports facilities, including Levi’s Stadium, where the National Football League’s San Francisco 49er’s play; Amway Center, home of the Orlando Magic of the National Basketball Association; U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings; and Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.

VenueNext will work with the other app vendors that previously provided services to Saint Luke’s to build an integration between the new app and the app-based services the hospital provides, Gash says. So some of the apps may still work, or else VenueNext will build those capabilities.

The new app will also offer new features, such as allowing staff and visitors to order food for delivery to a room or pickup. Saint Luke’s also plans to send push notifications via the app to let patients know about a new service, physician or class, such as a parenting class, that is nearby to where they live or work.

The app will give consumers a convenient central online access point to their healthcare provider, Gash says. “Consumers are used to convenience and easy access to information and healthcare should be no different,” she says.

The installation of the integrated app, which will be available for both Apple and Android devices, was not without challenges. For starters the new universal app will be integrated with St. Luke’s newly installed electronic medical records system from Epic Systems Inc. but other more older legacy systems for customer service and patient management are taking more time, money and information technology staff to connect, although St. Luke’s isn’t giving out many details.

The new universal app also needed to be designed in a way that lets patients use the app inside—or outside—of a St. Luke’s facility.

At its main Kansas City hospital, St. Luke’s is currently rolling out beacon technology to help patients and visitors find their way around the campus. Beacons are small wireless transmitters that can sense a smartphone’s location via Bluetooth low energy and send marketing messages and other alerts to consumers’ smartphones.

St. Luke’s is deploying beacons on the main floor of its flagship Kansas City hospital that send visitors maps to use—as long as they have the hospital’s app on their phone and enable push notifications. “By integrating all of our services and hospital care information into one mobile app we can make it easier for our patients and visitors to find and access the information they need quickly to make their visit with us as comfortable and convenient as possible,” Gash says.

St. Luke’s has a fairly substantial and established digital and mobile healthcare base. Overall St. Luke’s has about 87,488 patients signed up and using its MyChart portal and about 1,300 patients access the portal by a mobile device. “Mobile is up 30% since October,” Gash says.

In February St Luke’s further broadened its digital and mobile healthcare program by rolling out an online physician scheduling service that lets a patient book visits over the web with doctors in 25 specialties.

The health system is using Zocdoc, a New York online medical care scheduling service, as its technology provider. Patients can use a desktop version of the online physician scheduling tool or download a Google or Apple app to book an appointment.

Patients can search for providers by insurance and ZIP code, read professional profiles and verified patient reviews, see doctors’ real-time availability and make appointments instantly online. At launch, more than 25 different specialties—including primary care, ob-gyn, cardiology, neurology, family medicine and more—were available for booking online service across nine of Saint Luke’s locations in Kansas and Missouri, the health system says.

Patients also can fill out online health information forms prior to their first appointment to save time and provide physicians with more complete and accurate patient information, the health system says.

Online physician scheduling is the latest addition to St. Luke’s burgeoning digital healthcare program. In August the health system in tandem with telehealth platform provider MDLive began offering digital doctor visits for a variety of conditions, including cold and flu, asthma, bronchitis, acne, allergies, fever, headache and sore throat, insect bites, diarrhea and nausea, and infections.

After downloading the Apple or Android app and registering family members, users choose from among available providers, share the reason for the visit, and a brief health history with pre-existing conditions. Within approximately 15 minutes, users will be connected via telephone or video conference with a provider, who will diagnose, recommend treatment and prescribe medicine.

Saint Luke’s physicians and nurse practitioners will provide this service, supported by MDLive’s physician network. The Saint Luke’s and MDLive providers consist of board-certified family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine and pediatrics practitioners.

The virtual visit experience is similar to a video chat, allowing patient and provider to ask questions, upload photos and video to assist with diagnosis, and discuss treatment options, the health system says. Children as young as 18 months may be seen through the app. The cost per visit will vary, depending on a patient’s insurance plan, but about is $49 per visit.

But even with the rollout of more individual patient-focused website and mobile tools, St. Luke’s main priority is making accessing care and managing health information online more universal and convenient for patients, Gash says. “We want patients to connect to us how and when they want,” she says.