After the outbreak of COVID-19, hospitals in the United States urged patients to avoid visiting emergency rooms. They offered Telehealth services to 44 million senior citizens through mobile healthcare apps. The fascinating thing about 2020 is that it holds great opportunities for healthcare startups and entrepreneurs as this pandemic transforms the mobile healthcare sector. 

According to the CB Insights report, “The global healthcare deal count hit 1,272 in the quarter, which is increased by 6% compared to Q1’20.” This funding to healthcare startups reached $18.1B, surpassing the previous record of $16.4B in Q3’18. 

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Not only this, deals and dollars increased for digital healthcare companies around the globe. Equity funding grew by 22% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) to reach $5.8B, while sales rose to 5% over the same period. 

Reasons: Why you should invest in Healthcare App Development

A Productive Management System

Hospitals’ main job is to treat their patients, but they also need to maintain their records internally, which cannot be avoided. An inefficient management system results in a lower level of services. Such problems can be solved by investing in healthcare mobile app development. The best part of having a productive management system is that it allows setting clear goals and maintaining impeccable records. 

Reducing diagnostic errors

Improving diagnosis in healthcare and finding out the root cause of the health problem will require a significant re-envisioning of the diagnostic process. Diagnostic errors are complex and multifaceted issues; a medical diagnosis app can significantly reduce diagnostic errors. Under the type of healthcare app, medical diagnosis applications can help understand a patient's illness, provide the treatment, and prescribe it accordingly. 

A convenient payment system

There’s another critical reason to invest in healthcare mobile app development services is payment system optimization. With secure payment services, users can quickly pay the bills through apps. Therefore, we can say that going cashless is the new norm in the healthcare industry. 

Challenges in Healthcare application development

Patient Data Security

In the healthcare sector, implementing security measures for user data protection is challenging. Communication between a patient and medical staff also need to be secured to protect the patient’s data. According to SafeAtLast, the estimated losses due to security in 2019 are $25 billion for the healthcare industry.

So, how can we overcome it? 

Solution: For example, the feature like in-app chat in medical apps deals with sensitive personal data. All you need to do is research regulatory compliance, considering the peculiarities of your medical application. Most commonly, you need to create a healthcare or medical app that adheres to HIPAA security and data privacy standards. 

HIPAA breaches can cost you a fortune, and it is advised to follow them strictly. Hence, healthcare service providers must know the importance of HIPAA compliance while planning to develop a medical app. 

Failing to engage the patients

Transparency is always essential for the interaction between healthcare providers and patients. In short, it is the crux of healthcare mobile app development services. Without openness, even incredible apps may fail to engage patients. Similarly, if the healthcare app fails to improve the medical experience via information and data, it fails the core purpose. 

Solution: It is vital to provide patients with health and treatment-related data and information and resolve their pain points. A healthcare app must also include the ability to schedule/cancel an appointment, 24x7 consulting service, request prescriptions, and easy access to medical records. 

Complicated for Users

Both doctors and patients may stop using healthcare applications if it has a  complicated user experience. This challenge needs to be solved if you are planning to create a successful mobile healthcare solution. The tools like blood pressure monitors, glucometers, and fitness bands should also connect to the app seamlessly. 

Solution: Healthcare app developers need to consider the importance of user experience of an application sincerely. The success rate of an app not only depends on its features but also on the scope for the integration of fitness and medical devices with an application.

Types of Healthcare Apps

1. Hospital App

The first type of mobile app is a hospital or clinic app, which provides the medical staff with interoperability and secure care conditions to improve clinical communication and workflow. Hospitals and clinic owners may develop such apps for managing/scheduling staff better, save time on administrative tasks, eradicate errors, get an overview of their performance (number of appointments and full appointment history by the patient), improve their efficiency, and streamline the whole process.  

2. Telehealth

Telehealth or doctor on-demand is a type of healthcare app that allows a user or patient to consult a doctor over video calls without visiting a clinic. This kind of application has ended the clinic tours, especially in the time of novel coronavirus. Thanks to doctor on-demand apps! 

Digital health has already become a cornerstone of developed healthcare systems. The reasons to prefer telehealth services are convenience, cheaper services, and better work-balance. According to the Statista report, the digital health market is expected to increase around six times in size by 2025 to 504.4 billion U.S dollars. 

Did these numbers influence you? If you want to become a healthcare provider or doctor who wishes to dive into this profitable market segment, you need to invest in Telehealth app development services.

3. Daily Health App

This kind of mobile healthcare app is about keeping track of daily activities such as nutrition and sleep. Everyday health apps can be divided into four main categories: 

• mindfulness
• sleep
• nutrition
• activity
  

A daily health app enables users to take care of their bodies and minds by keeping track of things like medications and everything that can help them stay healthy. 

Here are a couple of features, which can be included to develop a successful personal healthcare app:

• Analysis: This feature is based on data gathered from user activity; a daily health app must measure metrics and make specific conclusions. 
  

• Push Notifications: It generates awareness among users or patients and can boost engagement simultaneously. 
  

• Run or Sleep Tracking: This feature lets users track sleep and run tracking according to the app’s goals. 
  

This type of personal healthcare app is the best idea to adopt if you plan to generate revenue from prepaid service subscriptions. 

4. Medical Software

This type of healthcare software focuses on more complicated tasks. These include identifying patients and maintaining their records, managing clinical notes, filing patient demographics, managing a list of problems, and recording external clinical documents. 

An excellent medical software is the one that includes a good number of features. It can certainly help any medical organization optimize the operations which make a high impact on the overall management.

5. Health & Fitness App

There is an uprising trend in the kind of apps that make people feel better and healthier. If you want to jump into this developing market, you don’t need to wait. The health and wellness market size will grow by $1299.84 billion during 2020-2024. The market’s growth momentum will accelerate during the forecasted period. This way, it will increase in year-over-year growth, which showcases the demand is proliferating. 

If you are keenly interested in developing health and fitness app, it would be better to know its different types:

• Tracking activities app
• Physical workout and exercise app
• Monitoring diet and nutrition app
• Yoga and meditation app

Top Features to include while developing a Healthcare App

If you have made up your mind and all set to dive into healthcare app development, consider the following features that you want to implement. Depending on the purpose of your app, it could be some of the highlights below:

1. Search, Select and Consult Doctors

If you want to build any of the apps mentioned above in healthcare, most of them require this feature, which allows patients to search and consult doctors on video calls. For example, the Doctor-on-Demand app provides video medical consultation services and in-clinic services that patients expect in the current situation. 

Image Source: Doctor On Demand (Google Play)

2. Indoor Navigation System

This must-have feature of a hospital app allows to display routes and have an indoor navigation system. Therefore patients could quickly know the direction to every department of the hospital. It also informs users about the nearest pharmacies and labs by sending location-based notifications.

3. Multilinguality & Cloud Storage

To enhance the user experience of your patients/users in healthcare mobile apps, it’s essential to let users operate the app in their native or desired language. Such features can help to provide a basic understanding of services in an app. Also, all the data like order invoices, medical reports, medical history, appointments, and tests can be stored in the online drive. It can be easily accessed anywhere, anytime by the user with proper authorization. 

4. Push Notifications

It’s undoubtedly a good idea to remind your users or patients about their scheduled appointments. The feature ‘push notifications’ is useful when it comes to online video consultations. Notifications can be sent to the user 5-10 minutes before communication. 

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5. Payment Gateway Integration

To benefit from your healthcare app, you need to realize the importance of a sound payment system. Some of the most versatile and safest payment systems available now are Braintree, Dwolla, PayPal, and Stripe. You can also integrate payment aggregators like Apple Pay or Google Pay into your healthcare mobile apps. 

6. Reminders 

This feature is all about informing patients about their scheduled or canceled appointments. This feature is beneficial, especially for the elderly. It can also be modified and used as a pill reminder when required. 

Now, let’s walkthrough with the most basic and essential features during healthcare app development.

Features to include for Healthcare App Development

User Panel

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Admin Panel

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How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Healthcare App?

A generic question like this, unfortunately, does not have a generic response. Now, app development is a strenuous process and a number of factors like team size, deadline, features and more are involved to fix on a specific budget. 

As a leading company for mobile app development in Toronto, we sincerely hope that these insights will help you decide to hire a professional mobile development company and a team of developers. 

Let us know if you have any questions about the cost of mobile app development, and we'll be glad to assist you with any questions regarding healthcare app development.