Healthcare app development is a challenging undertaking. It requires analysis and ideation.
There are too many existing features that a healthcare mobile app must-have. Such features include patient data, pharmacy information, medical facilities information, and more. The performance of medical technology is always improving day by day.
What’s more, the demand for healthcare app is also high in today’s world.
Introduction:
The healthcare industry has been moving at a fairly steady pace for the last few years and though we have seen some outstanding growth in the sector, healthcare apps are still considered predominantly overly complicated products that are time-consuming to create or maintain.
Before we proceed to the details, let’s understand the definition of healthcare app development and its purpose.
What is Healthcare App Development?
Healthcare app development is the process of developing an app for mobile devices to redefine the way patients interact with their healthcare providers. Using this, users can easily submit and follow their health issues in real-time.
For example, medical services, hospital experience, electronic health records, insurance claims, etc
Purpose of Healthcare App Development include the following:
- For Doctors: Doctors can use digital solutions to track patient records, manage treatments, and schedule appointments.
- For Patients: Patients need digital health solutions that are accessible, easy to use, and make their lives easier. For example, an app to help people book an appointment with their doctors or get tips regarding nutrition or family health.
Healthcare is all about treating the patients. Keep reading the latest trends corresponding to wellness app building:
- There are 45,478 healthcare apps on the Apple Store
- There are 43,285 apps available on the Play Store.
- In 2019, the mHealth domain got $13.7 Billion worldwide.
- As per the Accenture survey, approximately 75% of the patients are aware of the importance of health care app.
Benefits of Healthcare App for Healthcare Application Development:
The healthcare app benefits both the patient and the doctor. Healthcare apps make it easy for doctors to determine a diagnosis without having to refer to paper files.
For those in need of medical treatment, these apps enable instant information on the symptoms, possible medication, and the necessary dosage. Moreover, easy access makes it easier for doctors and patients to communicate.
Benefits of Healthcare Application Development are:
- Remote diagnosing and monitoring is possible and easier
- Supports doctors for quick interaction with patients or build a closer relationship with them
- Reduces risk and enhances patient’s safety via automated tasks
- Simplifies the payment system and manages money flow online. Patients are free to go cashless.
Also, read – How IoT is impacting the Healthcare Industry
Types of Healthcare Mobile Apps:
You may be wondering, ‘What is mhealth?’ As you probably know, mHealth stands for mobile health. Based on purposes and functionality, there are various healthcare and medical apps that have incredibly improved patient satisfaction over the recent years.
Let’s overview the top 4 famous mHealth apps:
1. Fitness Apps
Due to a pandemic, many fitness centers around the world were closed recently. Experts immediately noticed the rising popularity of home workout apps that help people keep track of their health and fitness by providing different training programs without spending much; therefore, they are trendy.
Examples: 8fit, FitOn, Fit Radio
2. Telehealth and Telemedicine
Sometimes you just forget. In general, Physicians use telehealth apps to calculate patients’ prescribed drug doses based on their current health condition, age, weight, and other personal information while avoiding time-consuming and complex tools to make it faster.
It’s pretty safe to say then that telehealth apps can help manage a user’s medication, track their disease, establish healthy habits and share data with doctors and caregivers. The developments in AI and machine learning have created new possibilities for patient-centered healthcare delivery enabling personalization and preventative interventions.
Examples: Medisafe, MyTherapy
3. Risk Assessment Apps
Monitoring patients’ health has never been so convenient as it is today. Applications for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, offer new, seamless ways of managing the health of patients through their Electronic Health Records (EHR) or other health monitoring devices that they wear.
Obstetricians, midwives, and nurses use the FHR 5-Tier app, for example, which offers a simple way to monitor the Fetal Heart Rate (FHR) using fetal ultrasound during labor on smartphones and tablets.
4. Apps for patient-doctor communication
Personalized medicine touched every aspect of our life. Whether you are seeking medical consultation, doctor referral, or medical data, you may not just get any information.
Such apps for doctor consultation can help you find a medical specialist and make an appointment, arrange a video call and pay for the consultation through an integrated payment gateway.
Further, Read – Top Healthcare Apps for Patients
Now that we have studied the reasons and types of healthcare apps, it’s time to explore the crucial steps of healthcare application development.
How to Develop a Healthcare App?
Following is a step-by-step itinerary for healthcare app development that you need to know in detail. There are specific steps that we can implement while processing healthcare application development:
- Finding an idea
- Market Research and Customer Feedback
- Choose App Type
- Create Design
- Make it HIPAA Compliant
- Build an MVP
Step 1 – Finding an idea
The first and foremost step towards medical app development is to form an idea. Undoubtedly, the app idea is critical to any healthcare app development journey.
Becoming successful in the mobile app space is no small feat, and it’s important to make sure your idea for a healthcare mobile app will be popular with users.
Step 2 – Market Research and Customer Feedback
The second thing that you need to do when planning to create a healthcare app studies your niche, know more about your competitors and discover how your app will improve the situation in the healthcare industry. This is called market research and it’s always required before writing any code or starting design work.
Furthermore, gather feedback from customers regarding development ideas to the respective developers from the healthcare domain.
Step 3 – Choose App Type
Choosing a healthcare app type may be overwhelming, but if you know what your goals are, the process of mobile health app development will be easier. You can decide to build an app for either doctors or patients or a mix of both.
Healthcare is an extremely broad industry with lots of different processes and huge amounts of data resulting from those processes. There are many types of healthcare apps, building one without thinking it through benefits no one.
Step 4 – Create Design
The creation of design for apps for healthcare is a very important stage. The more attractive and easy to use an application, the better it is perceived by users and the greater the chances of success.
With healthcare app development, the design process has four stages – conceptualization, prototyping, testing, and implementation. These steps are directly related to the product itself, and its success depends on the careful planning of the healthcare mobile application development.
Step 5 – Make it HIPAA Compliant
If you’re willing to create a healthcare app, it’s imperative to comply with some regulations. The idea of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is to ensure the protection of personal healthcare information for both parties: patients and healthcare providers.
If you’re willing to create a healthcare app, it’s imperative to comply with some regulations. The idea of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is to ensure the protection of personal healthcare information for both parties: patients and healthcare providers.
Below are the short checklists that will help you during healthcare app development:
- Limit access to users health data
- Ensure data encryption and backup
- Use HIPAA compliant services
Step 6 – Build an MVP
After selecting the app type and making it HIPAA compliant, it’s time to understand the development methodologies your project requires.
More often than not, most specialists are indifferent to MVP development and only concentrate on the last part of the whole scheme. However, it’s essential to ensure you follow the same methods while creating an MVP.
So, whenever you are thinking of creating the healthcare app MVP, it is necessary to build it fast and make it viable. With the available free / paid software for mobile app development, your healthcare app can be developed in a short period
Healthcare App MVP: Features Checklist
There are many different healthcare apps on the market already and they’re providing a range of services within the industry, like booking appointments, making payments, and so on. However, there are some features that all healthcare apps should have to ensure that they are both easy-to-use and helpful for their users.
There are various features many healthcare apps include, take a look at the following visual of the features checklist:
Bottom Line:
If you are planning to build a healthcare app, don’t forget that user experience plays an important role in its success. This can be achieved by interviewing real customers, rather than letting users test your product during the testing phase.
Conducting interviews is not easy when users tell you about their health issues, but it’s doable with expertise and professionalism. Simply focus on getting the right answers instead of just asking basic questions.
Mobcoder is an app development company having profound experience in building mobility into all of our software products., the internet of things app, and launching a startup. We have worked on various types of campaigns and delivered high-performing products.
Look no further – if you are searching for a healthcare mobile app development company, we are considered the best out there!
