How to Develop a Healthcare App: Steps, Features, And Cost 

How to develop a Healthcare app that will boost patient outcomes and bring revenue? The best way is to partner with a reputable mobile app development company to ensure that you have access to the right expertise and resources. For example, a company like nCube will build a skilled tech team to create a medical app for your organization. In this post, we focus on the ins and outs of the process. 

According to Grand View Research, the mHealth market is booming and is valued at $43 billion. Moreover, it will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.6% until at least 2030. With the mobile health market going off the charts, it is safe to assume a growing number of businesses will be looking for ways to develop a good health app.  

Keeping that in mind, we would like to address some of the key questions associated with this process and focus on the steps, costs, and features needed to develop the product that will stand out on the market. So, how to develop a medical app? Here are the key steps.

How to make a medical app: Key steps

There are specific steps you can follow to kick off the software product development process and see it through to the final iteration that meets user needs. Focus on the following phases when making a medical app: 

1. Selecting the right audience and platform 

To determine how to develop a health app, first and foremost, you need to figure out two critical things – who is the target audience and what platform you intend to build your app for. Dealing with the first factor entails getting to know people who will use your product. It is the moment when you need to raise several essential questions. For instance, will the app include video streaming, allowing a doctor to see the patient’s face? Will the patient be sitting or standing up? Asking questions like this gives a clear idea of what an app should do. 

Next, as to the platform, choosing a cross-platform approach is now a significant trend. Yet, there are always more options available. So, you need to determine whether your app will run on native iOS or Android operating systems, will be integrated with various Internet of Things (IoT) devices, as well as have some innovative aspects like Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR). 

2. Prototyping 

After choosing the right target audience and selecting the platform to create a medical app, it is the moment to start prototyping. In this success story, you can see how we applied our 15+ years of experience to a highly-functional and user-friendly product based on a series of prototypes.  

Luckily, there are easy-to-use tools allowing you to create proper prototypes in a short period of time. These can be used to run A/B testing, have hands-on experience of what an app will look and behave like, as well as verify with the development team if all the features work properly considering the chosen platform. At the moment, choosing Adobe XD and InVision might be good choices for the visual representation of prototypes.  

3. Security, privacy, and compliance 

If your product uses patient health indicators (PHIs), you must consider security, privacy, and compliance. In this case, we showed how to ensure bank-grade protection when delivering a SaaS data analytics platform. When developing a Healthcare app, the requirements are even more robust.  

From the get-go, you need to ensure HIPAA compliance. It is a must for any Healthcare app working with PHIs. Next, it’s time to take care of GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 270001, and IEC 62304. Finally, a product should have two-factor authentication, uses an SSL connection, and comes with AES encryption protocols. 

4. Building an MVP and gathering feedback 

After taking care of data protection, it is time to build the first product’s version – an MVP. At this step, you can tap into our ability to launch a dedicated team in about 2 or 4 weeks and deliver MVP as soon as possible.   

In any other case, building an MVP allows companies to gather user feedback further. Essentially, this step is important for unveiling bugs and errors before the final product reaches an end user. When building a Healthcare app’s first iteration, appeal to user testing and quality assurance to make the most out of your MVP.  

5. Developing an ecosystem for future scaling 

Finally, when your MVP is out there, it presents the desired feedback, and you develop the final product, it is time to think about the ecosystem and scaling. Again, it doesn’t matter if you use Android or iOS – if your product succeeds, there will be more users, and you will be forced to scale.   

When thinking about the ecosystem in creating a medical app, the key thing is to take a step back and look at all you’ve done from a broader perspective. Take a look at potential segments that can help drive value and pursue them to make your product stand out.  

How to develop a medical app: Features

When developing a Healthcare app, you will need to choose the features it has. The number of features will depend on your budget. Yet, these are the must-have features a Healthcare app cannot avoid: 

• Registration, login, and authorization 
• Patient/physician profile 
• Search bar and filtering 
• Appointment and scheduling features 
• Video and voice calling 
• Online messenger or a chat 
• Payment options 
• System administrator panel 
• Backend framework 
• Libraries used for implementation  
• End-product code documentation 

Keep in mind that any premium features like VR, AR, two-factor authentication, and chatbots will cost extra and take additional time to develop.  

The cost of making a Healthcare app 

There are several things to consider when it comes to the cost of creating a medical app. First is the time needed for developing the features above. Second is the hourly rate of experts who will complete the work. In general, the cost of developing a Healthcare app can range from tens of thousands of dollars to several hundred thousand dollars or even more, depending on the suite of features. The price also depends on the outsourcing destination and the vendor you select.  

The bottom line 

How to develop a Healthcare app? You need to select a target audience, choose the right development platform, build clickable prototypes, take care of compliance and security, make an MVP for gathering user feedback, and present an ecosystem around the product. Remember that the overall process’s price directly depends on outsourcing destinations and features your product will have. If something still needs to be clarified, you can always contact us.