Since the Coronavirus hit our planet, everything has changed from our personal relationships, how we plan vacations and do business, and most importantly, how we look after loved ones and our health and fitness. While we were going through all these fundamental changes, there was a solution infiltrating every other business, helping them grow, specifically in the healthcare industry.
It is a mobile app development solution that emerged from the IT sector. Healthcare app development, for example, the market was valued at $17.92B in 2019 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.0% till 2027. Given the fact that the number of smartphone users is rapidly increasing, with about 90% of mobile internet time being spent on apps.
Healthcare app development is building health-related applications, such as telemedicine or fitness and workout apps. Health apps can be used to help people manage their fitness and monitor and track their health conditions. On the other hand, organizations that develop mobile health apps get plenty of opportunities to earn a high return on their investment.
Down the line, healthcare application development benefits hospitals, fitness studios, pharmacies, doctors, and patients, as well as corporate companies alike. For example,
Mobile healthcare apps benefits
- Can help patients manage their health better;
- Make it possible to monitor and adjust treatment plans to meet specific fitness needs;
- Keep track of health data with a personal health condition;
- Connect to doctor in real-time virtually;
- Enhance transparency between doctors and patients;
- ePharmacy apps help manage medication dosages and order prescriptions online, while drug stores can deliver their services digitally.
Listing all the benefits might prolong this post to a number of pages. Who will not want to leverage luxurious health services by moving just fingertips on their smartphones? That is why mHealth beneficiaries are growing, and so do health apps.
It is absolutely no coincidence that you are here and have never thought about developing a healthcare app. But in case you have not, it’s fine. Because you are here and this post explores significant aspects of healthcare and medical application development.
Business Cases For Healthcare Mobile App Development
EMR and EHR apps
The electronic health record or electronic medical record is an electronic system designed to store and manage all health-related information for individual patients. An EHR/EMR helps keep patients’ health information safe, accessible, and secure. Besides, it makes it easier for clinicians and their staff to record and manage the health information of their patients on one single platform.
As part of our shift to more health information technology, electronic health record systems are being converted to mobile systems. Patient data has become accessible from anywhere, anytime, as a result of this transformation.
Telehealth and Telemedicine apps
Telehealth apps aim to make doctor consultation accessible and convenient using telecommunication technology. Moreover, such apps entail in-app chat and video call facilities, allowing patients to book and attend doctor visits right from the comfort of their homes. Since patients can visit their doctor virtually, it reduces no-shows.
Healthy Lifestyle apps
Under the category of lifestyle, such apps comprise functionalities that help people take good care of their health. Most often than not, healthy lifestyle apps let users set health-related goals, such as fitness goals or meditation goals. Then, they can get recommendations to achieve their targets. Besides that, users can also track their progress.
Mental health and therapy apps
The mental health and therapy app is an app that uses the latest technology and AI to help people connect, find support and track their own progress to achieve their goals. From reaching a healthier weight, managing stress, quitting smoking, or improving relationships, users can seek help for anything. Thousands of mental health organizations and professionals also use this app to offer their therapy services.
Hint: AI and IoT are two prominent Healthcare technology trends in the market, but they are not only.
E-Prescription apps
An E-prescription app is a mobile app that allows patients to request prescriptions from their doctor electronically. Or get it delivered from the nearest pharmacy online. The app works almost exactly like traditional in-person prescription requests, except that it is done through a smartphone instead of in person.
The app saves patients time, reduces doctors’ costs, and enhances the patient experience. Such apps earn revenue via subscription plans, ads, and transaction fees.
Examples of Successful Healthcare Apps
It is always better to dig into the apps available in the mobile healthcare app market. The practice helps you create an out-of-the-box app that stands out in the crowd and guarantees success.
Headspace
The subscription-based solution to stress caused by the hectic lifestyle, the Headspace app connects users with professionals to guide them with meditative practices. Headspace users can also track the history of their mindfulness and meditation exercises and add friends and family members on the app, too. Headspace is available for both iOS and Android devices.
Teladoc
Bringing the one-stop solution to a broad spectrum of health and well-being, Teladoc helps users maintain good health lifelong. Its services include physical and mental healthcare services, support for chronic and complex health conditions, on-demand urgent care, virtual care, and more. Teladoc also offers a bonus functionality for iOS users, i.e., smooth integration with AppleHealth.
Read Also : How to Develop a Telehealth App like Teladoc?
MySugr
It is an app for patients with diabetes developed by business people with diabetes to make it painless to manage your diabetes. It provides patients with a diabetes logbook, a personalized dashboard to see blood sugar levels, secure backups, and daily/monthly/yearly reports shareable with doctors. In addition, MySugr is also compatible with AppleHealth and various diabetes devices.
Read Also : Be A Leader Of Everyday Health With Diabetes Tracker App Development
Medisafe
One of the top cloud-synced medication management and pill reminder apps, allowing users to keep up with medication schedules. It is a user-friendly app that also lets users customize their daily alerts to take medicines.
The app ultimately ensures users don’t forget to take their pills at the prescribed time or take double doses. Furthermore, users can also manage and keep track of medications for their loved ones and notify them if they don’t take them.
Read Also : How to Develop a Pill Reminder & Medication Tracker App like Medisafe?
HealthTap
HealthTap is a virtual-first medical and health app that provides high-quality physician care 24/7 at affordable prices. The app also allows patients to schedule recurring appointments with their doctor. Users can choose from multiple subscription plans offered by HealthTap to find doctors, search for symptoms, or online therapy as per their needs.
Healthcare Mobile App Development Process
Before you rush to approach and hire any healthcare app development company, you should learn the ropes of app development and how to execute your healthcare app idea professionally.
Target real health problems
As discussed earlier in the post, many business cases exist in the healthcare app development niche. In other words, you have to decide what type of healthcare or medical-related problems you want to solve.
For example, you can build a mental health app that alleviates stress, medicine delivery, or a telehealth app to help patients get medical assistance without stepping out into the real world. Or a fitness and yoga app may tickle your business fancy.
Know your audience
Your audience is who you want to use your healthcare app. By putting yourself into their shoes, only you can understand and draft a business model that can attract them and increase your revenue. While defining your user persona, you must consider their gender, age, average income, lifestyle, location, and difficulties they face.
Learning demographics and how your audience avails of existing solutions will help you efficiently map user journeys on your app. Furthermore, the discovery also aids in designing an engaging app that your target audience finds attractive.
Create an MVP
Once you conclude all the research and study, you shall start creating a Minimum Viable Product with your development team. You better hire professional mobile app developers if you don’t have a team. There are many benefits of launching MVP before launching the final version, such as;
- MVP accelerates time to market as it contains only functionality needed to operate the app;
- Helps you test and validate your healthcare app idea;
- You can verify if there is actually demand for what you are investing your time and money on;
- It is a cost-effective way to strategize your final product development;
- You can even show a working app to investors to attract funds;
Receive feedback and iterate
Now that you have your MVP ready, it is time you launch it in the market and get your audience to use and review your healthcare app. You should also use some marketing tactics, such as social media marketing, to make people aware of the solution and the benefits you offer.
As you start getting users, who will be called early adopters, never forget to ask for their experience and feedback. Such reviews will be helpful for your final product development. You can analyze what features your users might want, if the design needs to alter, and if the user journey is well mapped out. And as per your analysis, you can iterate your app to make it more user-centric.
You can test, launch, and iterate after every build. Therefore, we say the app development cycle is endless.
Things to Consider Before the Healthcare Mobile Application Development
Regulations
One of the biggest concerns regarding healthcare apps is the regulation they may encounter. There might be many kinds of rules imposed by the government of a particular region or country. Therefore, you must research and adhere to the guidelines and codes of conduct of the targeted location of your healthcare app.
Data security
Data security is a non-negotiable requirement in the digital world, specifically in the healthcare app industry. Since your app will store and process sensitive data of users, you need to implement appropriate technology to keep data safe, encrypt, and separate from other data to protect it from being accessed by hackers.
Nice-to have features
You need some engaging, advanced-level features besides your MVP features, which will only make your app function. Such features are to add value to your healthcare app and give users reasons to come back. Basically, advanced features make the healthcare app more user-friendly and stand out the app from the rest. You can invent advanced features as per your requirements or app nature, for example;
- Multi-factor authentication
- Personalized healthcare services
- Wearable support to track heart rate, etc.
- Virtual Reality for immersive doctor-patient experience
- AI chatbot for 24/7 customer support.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Healthcare App?
The cost of mobile healthcare application development depends on several factors and varies from project to project. Typically, it costs more to develop a mobile app than a website. On average, developing a mediocre healthcare app can cost vary from $40,000 to $600,000 or more. It purely depends on the size and complexity of the project.
Besides, there are different types of healthcare apps like the specialist, patient, doctor, pharmacy, lab, etc. And different apps require distinct features and integrations that can also oscillate the development budget.
Then there are other factors that influence healthcare app development costs, for example:
- The type of healthcare app;
- The number and complexity of app features;
- Third-party integrations and their charges;
- Research and UI/UX Designing;
- Backend development;
- Quality analysis and testing;
- Technologies, tools, and plugins;
- Developers’ salary or development rate;
- Maintenance and marketing.
Conclusion
To provide patients access to their medical records, improve efficiency, or reduce waste throughout the healthcare system, applications are changing how patients and providers interact.
Healthcare apps are an exciting approach to improving the quality of human life and health. By developing one, you can help many people better manage their chronic conditions, adopt a healthier lifestyle, or empower them to make healthier choices. You can also create an app for hospitals to manage appointments or provide virtual visit services.
Whatever your healthcare app idea would be, you just have to ensure you solve real problems with the right technology. Above all, if you find an agile technology partner, your success will be guaranteed.
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