Healthcare App Development or Healthcare Application Development: The Absolute Guide

Healthcare Applications Overview

Healthcare applications or medical software programs (Click to learn more), are used to manage healthcare processes and manage healthcare services. These applications automate the process of maintaining different types of healthcare facilities, such as hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and other healthcare service providers. These applications are designed to handle the various aspects of a healthcare facility, including patient management, medical billing, scheduling, payroll management, and different reports.

What Is Healthcare App Development?

Healthcare app development is designing, building, and maintaining mobile apps specifically for healthcare providers. The app aims to keep patients engaged and informed while providing valuable information to the healthcare team.

A healthcare app developer  creates software that improves how medical professionals manage their practices. It also allows patients to communicate with doctors through their mobile devices. To build such apps it’s best to get in touch with a custom healthcare software development team. 

What Is Healthcare App?

The apps and websites available on mobile devices have made health information more accessible than ever before. They are designed to be easy-to-use tools that let people track certain aspects of their health and wellness more effectively. Some are free, and some cost money. But there’s one thing they all have in common— they’re designed to make users’ lives easier by providing valuable insights into their own health and wellness data.

Benefits of Healthcare App for Doctors

Healthcare apps are used in the healthcare sector to manage patient records, track medications, and administer other services. With the help of these apps, doctors can ensure that patients receive the best treatment and prevent any possible complications before they occur.

Here are just a few of the benefits of healthcare apps for doctors via custom software development (https://sonatafy.com/the-major-benefits-of-custom-software-development-in-2023/):

Track Medication Compliance

Patients often forget to take their medicines regularly. This can result in various complications. Healthcare apps will help doctors track how often patients have taken their medicines and how many pills they haven’t taken. The app can remind them about their medications to let them take them at the right time without hassle.

Patient-Doctor Communication

With healthcare apps, doctors can stay in touch with their patients quickly, even when away from home or the office. All they have to do is check out the details of their patients on an app and respond to their queries or concerns immediately. This way, doctors can provide better medical services than ever before.

Accessibility of Patient Records

Healthcare apps are more accessible for doctors to access patient records on the go. It saves much time as well since there is no need for them to visit hospitals frequently to get hold of some critical information.

Benefits of Healthcare App for Patients

The apps have proved to be a trend that makes it easier for patients to receive the care they need. These include:

• Keep track of all medical records in one place
• Communicate with your doctor and specialists easily
• Share your medical data with friends and family
• Manage appointments, medications, and test results
• Get reminders about upcoming appointments or test results
• Find medical records if you need to see another doctor or specialist
• Easily manage and track medications (and their side effects)
• Access an emergency symptom checker
• Access to information on how to better prevent illnesses or injuries
• Get access to a 24/7 emergency hotline.

How To Build a Healthcare App

If you’re trying to make an app, you need to figure out what problem you want to solve. The first step to building a healthcare app is to evaluate the need for such an application.

Identify the problems within this field and create a product that can solve these issues.

Research the demographics of your target audience. Find who will be using it.

The audience for a product, such as a healthcare app, may span different age groups. For example, a product may be designed for adults and another for children. The two products would need to be designed differently to accommodate the needs of each group (1).

“Conducting interviews, focus groups, or surveys is a challenge as you need to keep the balance: get to the root of the user’s problem and keep the ethical balance. “

– UpTech

Start designing your app. This process can take six months to several years, depending on the complexity of your product. Many companies choose not to develop their apps; instead, they hire outside developers. Hiring an external consultant can help you save money and avoid long wait times associated with developing your team. Once your app has been fully developed, it’s time to release it into the market.

Make It HIPAA Compliant

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information. It establishes national standards to safeguard medical records and other personal health information (2).

“The Rule also gives patients rights over their health information, including rights to examine and obtain a copy of their health records and to request corrections.”

– Digital Authority

The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires:

• Place physical, administrative, and technological safeguards in places that ensure the privacy of protected health information
• Not use or disclose protected health information in any way that would be incompatible with the purpose for which it was received
• Provide individuals with notification of their rights to privacy, how their protected health information is used, and a list of those who will have access to it
• Upon request, give individuals access to their protected health information.

Healthcare App MVP — Features Checklist

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a term used in product development. The core idea of MVP is to start with something simple that can be tested with real customers as early as possible.

Here are the features checklist for Healthcare App MVP:

• Log-in/Register page
• Edit Profile page
• Search page
• My Health Records page
• Reminders and Alerts page
• Patient Dashboard page
• Refer friends and earn reward points page
• Top Doctors list page
• User’s profile details page
• Help/FAQs.

Professional Healthcare Apps

Professional healthcare apps are designed to help medical professionals manage their practice. They’re used for different purposes, such as recording vital statistics, organizing patient data, and generating reports. Many medical professionals find them more efficient and user-friendly than their paper counterparts.

Doctors can immediately access information about their patients. This helps them make better decisions. Nurses can also use this information to ensure quality care throughout each shift.

Healthcare Apps for Patients

Healthcare apps can help patients keep track of appointments, set reminders and goals, and connect with other patients and healthcare professionals. 

Most healthcare apps include tools that help monitor personal health information, from weight and blood pressure to daily exercise. Some apps offer fitness tips based on patient data, such as how many calories a person burns during a run or walk.

Some apps let patients access their GP records, offer online consultations with GPs 24/7, let users book appointments with doctors using a smartphone, provide medical advice and checklists, and even help users take photos of rashes or injuries to share with their doctor at appointments.

Appointment App

Healthcare appointment apps provide a centralized hub for patients to find verified information and appointments with local doctors, hospitals, laboratories, and other providers of health services. These apps let patients book appointments at their convenience or even see which locations offer same-day service when necessary.

A healthcare appointment app, also known as a healthcare scheduling app, is an online platform for patients and practitioners can check the availabilities of appointments, schedule appointments and communicate with each other.

These apps are beneficial for high-volume practices that keep track of many appointments. They can manage appointments for surgical centers, primary care physicians, dentists, and specialty clinics.

Reminder App

The Healthcare Reminder App is a software application that enables physicians to quickly and easily build a secure and intuitive application that reminds patients of upcoming appointments, tests, or procedures. A patient’s health information is available at any time on the app, allowing patients to get familiar with the information they need to know to take charge of their health. The application is secured using a unique username and password to prevent unauthorized access. Additionally, the healthcare reminder app provides physicians with a HIPAA-compliant way to send reminders and updates to patients via text message and email.

Fitness App

A healthcare fitness app is a mobile application that helps you increase your physical activity and manage your weight.

In addition to the standard tracking of steps, distance, and calories burned, these apps can also monitor heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, and even galvanic skin response (GSR). They can then send this data to your doctor to help them better understand how well you’re doing.

A healthcare fitness app can also motivate you with notifications and rewards. For example, they can remind you that it’s time to go for a walk or drink more water. They can also send you alerts when you’ve met specific goals or have been inactive for too long.

Some of these apps can keep track of your mood and stress levels by asking questions about how you feel daily. Finally, many healthcare fitness apps will let you share your progress with friends and family to keep yourself accountable.

Healthcare Mobile App Development Services

Healthcare mobile app development services are being offered by different companies with a team of knowledgeable and experienced professionals who understand the requirements and complexities of developing healthcare mobile apps. Some of these companies also have a dedicated team focusing on understanding healthcare problems and creating solutions for them. This approach makes sure that they deliver only top-quality products to their customers.

Types of Mobile Health Apps

You’ll find many types of apps, which fall into three categories: information, support, and management. Information apps provide information about a health condition or disease or share medical news or research findings.

Support apps offer tools to help patients manage a health condition, such as self-monitoring techniques or providing reminders for preventive care. Management apps have features that enable users to change their lifestyles to improve their health (e.g., activity trackers).

Apps for Medical Professionals

If you are a medical professional, such as a physician, nurse, or dentist, it may be helpful to download apps that will make your job easier. A few of the more useful apps include:

• An app that contains information on many medications. You can search for any drug by name or by category. You can also add your notes to medicines you have used or plan to use.
• The app is helpful for physicians or people who work with plenty of paperwork. It allows you to create and edit electronic documents, including Word and PDF files.
• If you want to avoid carrying around a heavy book and searching through each entry manually when you need medication information, then an app that lets you scan barcodes to find out everything about medication information.

Useful Features To Look Out for in Next-Gen Healthcare Apps

The most important thing to look into is whether your app has the right features and functions you need. Rather than going with a pre-made template app, hiring a company that will work with you to create something tailor-made for your business model, workflow processes, and target audience is better.

You want something intuitive and easy for you or your staff members to use — a clunky interface can add unnecessary time spent training employees on how to use it effectively or cause mistakes that may delay needing treatment. Other things to consider are Wi-Fi capability (you don’t want your info traveling over potentially insecure networks).

Monetization Models of a Healthcare Application

The healthcare application is a cloud-based system that lets the clients connect with their healthcare professionals and communicate with them via live chat, phone, or email. It also allows the clients to send secure messages to the medical professional without third-party intervention.

The application provides many business models for monetization, including:

• Subscription. Monthly charges for using the application
• Usage-based. Billing based on usage of the application
• Transaction based. Billing is based on transactions performed through the application.

Security, APIs, and Agile in a Medical App

When developing any medical app, it is crucial to consider security and privacy concerns from conception. This is because your app could potentially result in a loss of personal information or confidential data. You must keep the patient’s data private and ensure it is only used for intended purposes.

To do this, you should first build an application programming interface (API) as part of your application development process. An API provides a gateway authorizing another application to access the medical data stored on an internal server.

In healthcare, APIs are used mainly by electronic health record (EHR) systems and other applications that need access to medical history, lab results, medications, allergies, etc.

It is essential to use industry-standard encryption techniques such as HTTPS and encrypted storage to ensure secure transmission between the server and client apps. This will ensure that data transmitted over internet connections cannot be intercepted by anyone else who may be monitoring them.

Is Your Healthcare App Built To Last?

Your healthcare app is only as strong as its data. If you’re building a healthcare app, ensure that the data it collects and uses is reliable, up-to-date, and error-free. If it isn’t, your app could put patients at risk by presenting them with information not based on real-world facts.

It’s important to ask yourself these questions about the quality of your data:

Is the data updated regularly? If your users are looking for accurate, up-to-date information, they expect to be able to access it without any additional work. Does your app keep its information current in a convenient way for users?

Is all relevant information included? If you’re collecting data from patients and their doctors, do you have the relevant information they’ll need? Are there any pieces of vital information missing? Are there any errors or inconsistencies in the information? Even if you’re only dealing with one piece of data — one lab result — if it’s wrong and has somehow slipped through your system unnoticed, it can affect everything else your users see on your platform.

Features of Successful Healthcare Apps

When creating a successful healthcare app, many factors work together to make the app successful. Some factors include functionality and design, but other aspects also contribute. The idea behind this app should be simple and easy to understand. This can be achieved by having a clear purpose for the app.

The following important design aspect that can make or break a healthcare app is its ease of use, especially with inputting new information into the system. Users will become frustrated and use the system less frequently if it is too difficult to input further information. This can defeat its purpose as a health management tool.

The last important aspect of a healthcare app is its usefulness regarding disease management. At the same time, an app with great functionality, design, etc., would be considered successful if it doesn’t help with disease management. It is still considered unsuccessful because it doesn’t fulfill its healthcare tool purpose.

This factor doesn’t have to interfere with other aspects of successful healthcare apps, but they all need to work together to create successful healthcare.

What Are Some Examples of Healthcare Apps?

Examples of popular healthcare apps include programs that help match patients up with physicians and specialists in their area, provide medical information or keep an individual’s medical history on file. Other medical apps can track a patient’s weight and diet or remind them to take medication at specific times throughout the day.

How Much Does Healthcare App Development Cost?

The cost of healthcare app development depends on various factors, such as the app’s features, the geographic location where it will be used, and the size of the company developing the program.

Also, if you’re looking for an app that matches patients with local physicians or specialists, consider additional costs for legal work related to issuing certifications for doctors who participate in your program. It’s best to discuss your specific needs with a developer before determining a budget for your project. According to SPD Load (3):

“The average price is $40 per hour for application development in the healthcare domain here.”

– SPDLoad

Why Healthcare Apps?

The need for applications and software that can handle healthcare is rising with technological advancement. Here are some advantages of having a healthcare app, including:

1. Increase patient engagement
2. Better patient care
3. Healthcare organization management
4. Easy access to records and data.

How Does Healthcare App Development Work?

Healthcare app development works the same way as any other business or organization. The programmers work to streamline their workflow. This drives them to find the best tools, technologies, and practices for each project.

The process begins with a basic idea. What do you want to accomplish? This is where the people who have ideas about how to improve patient care come in. They need to articulate their goals for the developers to know what’s required.

This leads to the second step of creating a plan. What resources are available? What will it take to translate those goals into reality? For example, do you have the budget or need for custom software? If so, how much time will it take? Will you need outside services such as graphic design help? How much will all this cost?

The third step is building out different prototypes, which can be done using various coding languages.

How Do You Choose a Good Developer for Your Healthcare App?

There are many factors to consider when selecting a developer for your healthcare app. It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. While some platform providers may have certifications or other quality standards, they don’t necessarily mean that the certified company is the best choice for your project.

What do you want the app to do? Is it just an easy way for users to log their symptoms and keep track of their medicines? Or is it something more complicated, like administering tests and sending alerts for a specific condition? Do you need a mobile app, or can a web application work? How many users will be using this platform regularly? Who will be using it — doctors or patients, or both?

What do you want the app to look and feel like? What is your target demographic for this application? Do you want the software or interface design aspects outsourced, or will you handle that in-house?

Who Uses Healthcare Apps?

The number of people who have downloaded health-related apps is growing steadily. Some are used by the public, while others are specific to a particular demographic or medical condition (4).

“In a nutshell, whether you target patients or healthcare professionals, the audience is highly engaged, and the demand is growing every year.”

– Business of Apps

What Makes Healthcare App Development Challenging?

Several challenges are faced by developers while developing mobile healthcare applications. Some of these challenges are as follows:

Security and Protection

Security and protection have always been a concern for anyone dealing with sensitive data. The hospital staff, doctors, and patients — require secure access to data and other resources. That’s why developers need to take extraordinary measures while designing it to achieve security without fail.

Remote Accessibility

The patient records should be accessible from anywhere at any time for doctors and patients. This is one of the most important things one should keep in mind about healthcare application development because if it fails to provide remote accessibility, then it will fail miserably in delivering its purpose.

What Is the Future of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare App Development?

Hospitals are starting to use virtual assistants to provide information to patients looking for something specific on their website or through an app. Artificial intelligence is already in use in several ways in healthcare:

• Help physicians make more accurate diagnoses and treatment recommendations
• Let doctors predict potential health issues for patients before they develop into severe conditions, which could save the patient a lot of time and money on visits to their doctor’s office
• Patients can easily schedule appointments and monitor their health at home.

What Are the Differences Between Healthcare App Development and Other App Development?

Healthcare app development is different from other app development in many ways. One big difference is that healthcare apps have to be HIPAA-compliant. This means any data in the apps are stored on servers meeting those standards.

This can make healthcare app development much more expensive and time-consuming than other kinds of app development because it’s difficult to find proper servers for hosting a secure database.

Another area where healthcare apps differ is the type of data they store, which has stricter regulations than most other data types. For example, some states don’t authorize certain information to be stored, but others have more stringent rules about what kind of data can be collected on someone without their permission.

Develop Patient-Centered Apps

Patient-centered apps aim to provide patients with tools and information that empower them to better care for themselves. Patient-centric apps can be beneficial to both the patient and their caregivers.

For the patient, having access to a mobile device can increase self-efficacy, improve self-management of health conditions, help patients adhere to treatment plans, and even enhance compliance with preventative care protocols.

For the caregiver, these apps can help communicate with patients and families, manage appointment schedules and medication lists, monitor treatment regimens and adherence, and offer other forms of support.

Experience in Developing Healthcare Applications

With extensive experience in developing healthcare applications and software, developers are proficient in the latest trends and technologies, including:

• Mobile Applications
• Healthcare Web applications
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
• Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) standards-compliant data warehousing
• EHR/EMR Systems — Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, McKesson.

Healthcare App Startup Ideas

A healthcare app startup should consider its target audience, industry, and available funding opportunities.

If you’re looking to start a healthcare app startup, here are some ideas you can consider:

• An app that encourages healthy lifestyles by providing a customizable interface for tracking physical activities and completing other fitness-oriented tasks
• A healthcare app that helps patients manage mental health through personalized plans for managing stress or improving sleep quality with tips from the patient’s healthcare provider
• An app that provides information about potentially harmful environmental conditions such as air quality and noise pollution for users in an industry where employees often work on-the-go
• A medical app that connects healthcare professionals with patients seeking treatment for specific ailments, such as chronic pain or fatigue, offers assistance with diagnosis, treatment options, and symptom management.

Frequently Asked Questions About Healthcare App Development: The Absolute Guide

How to make a healthcare app?

You need a clear idea of what you want to build. Next, find the right technology stack for your app. Finally, build it. App development requires a lot of time and effort. It’s an iterative process that involves multiple iterations and testing before the final product.

How much does it cost to develop a health app?

The cost of developing a health app will vary based on the complexity of its features, the number, and quality of the illustrations required, and whether it’s a first-of-its-kind app.

Here are a few factors that will have a direct impact on the cost of developing an app:

Time. Depending on the complexity of your app, it could take anywhere from a few months to several years to develop. If starting from scratch, you should hire one or two developers for at least a year to ensure you don’t get rushed into making compromises with your design.

Number and quality of illustrations. Every app that requires illustrations will need designers and artists. The more complex the designs are, the more time it’ll take to be drawn up. If your designer is your developer, this cost will be included in your overall development cost. If not, you’ll have to factor in their time as well (5).

“A healthcare app costs an average of $300,000 to develop, not considering post-launch maintenance and promotion. This amount, however, is insufficient for complex solutions.”

– LinkedIn

What are the 4 categories of healthcare apps?

With the thousands of healthcare apps available, it’s hard to determine which are worth downloading. It’s important not to look at the categories into which they fall but also to consider their purpose and if they’re easy to use. There are four basic categories of health apps:

• Apps that educate users about a particular condition or treatment
• Those that provide reminders/alerts
• Healthcare apps that help users track or improve a health goal

Conclusion

Healthcare app development is a very cost-effective way to offer more health services, more coverage, and better service quality. An effective healthcare app development process will help you create an application that helps many people while increasing your organization’s bottom line.

References:

1. Conducting interviews, focus groups, or surveys is a challenge as you need to keep the balance: get to the root of the user’s problem and keep the ethical balance. – UpTech Quote
   https://www.uptech.team/blog/healthcare-mobile-app-development
2. The Rule also gives patients rights over their health information, including rights to examine and obtain a copy of their health records and to request corrections. – Digital Authority Quote
   https://www.digitalauthority.me/resources/healthcare-app-development-ultimate-guide/
3. The average price is $40 per hour for application development in the healthcare domain here. – SPDLoad Quote
   https://spdload.com/blog/healthcare-app-development/
4. In a nutshell, whether you target patients or healthcare professionals, the audience is highly engaged, and the demand is growing every year. – Business of Apps Quote
   https://www.businessofapps.com/app-developers/healthcare/
5. A healthcare app costs an average of $300,000 to develop, not considering post-launch maintenance and promotion. This amount, however, is insufficient for complex solutions. – LinkedIn Quote
   https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-does-cost-develop-healthcare-app-2022-tanya-sinha/