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Along with the immediate effect on the global economies, the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a long shadow on health services. Frost & Sullivan’s recent survey concluded that in response to the disruption, over 50% of healthcare organizations have ramped up their software investment. Healthcare app development, also known as mHealth, has emerged as one of the critical enablers of healthcare innovation.
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Due to greater service convenience, mobile health apps tend to get patient buy-in and reinforce a patient-centered approach. This translates into positive customer sentiment and develops a competitive edge for a healthcare provider. So it’s no wonder that leading healthcare companies want to hop on the trend and improve their services levels.
Healthcare mobile app development refers to the process of building an application that helps users manage their personal health, fitness goals, and insurance claims.These solutions can also be leveraged by doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff to step up the quality of care and promote better patient outcomes.
Healthcare organizations are always looking to optimize patient care, reduce costs and increase efficiency. The use of mobile apps can help them to hit it all at once. Here are the main ways healthcare application development can benefit your organization.
Providing patients with 24/7 access to their medical records helps them manage their care, which improves quality, satisfaction, and patient engagement. This can result in better outcomes and fewer readmissions.
Mobile applications allow you to provide real-time data that can help you make decisions regarding treatments or medications before they are administered. This reduces waste and unnecessary spending on drugs or procedures, which saves money while improving patient outcomes.
There ccording to McKinsey, health technology offers a $250 billion to $350 billion savings opportunity.
Mobile technology takes over the administrative burden of scheduling, billing, and other tasks. This allows care teams to allocate more time and focus to the patient, thus providing better care.
It wasn’t until the pandemic that mHealth applications experienced a spike in demand. The global mHealth market has followed an upward curve — from $99 billion in 2020 to $181.1 billion in 2023.
Driven by the proliferation of devices and wearables, digital health applications have seen an uptick in downloads. As Statista suggests, in the US alone, the number of medical apps downloaded during the pandemic has increased by 30%. The tendency pertained well into the future and it is projected that the US market size of mHealth apps will hit $3.5 billion in 2025.
Now, let’s have a closer look at the most common types of healthcare software that drive downloads.
All health-related solutions can be classified into patient-centered and doctor-facing ones. Each category has its types.
These solutions cater to patients, boost patient engagement in the treatment process, and facilitate communication with doctors.
Patient portals allow users to view their medical records, schedule appointments, fill out pre-visit forms, and view bills through a secure interface. They also allow patients to submit billing claims and other documents electronically.
This app category helps individuals track all types of health-related activities — from medication intake to symptom checkers and pill identifiers. Apps like Glucose Buddy also help users manage their chronic conditions.
This application cohort spans fitness, lifestyle, and nutrition solutions that make it easier for people to monitor their daily activity levels and encourage them to engage in more physical activity and healthier habits throughout the day.
These types of applications raise the awareness of the general public about recent innovations in the healthcare field and other educational content. Educational apps may include a glossary of terms, illustrations and photographs, anatomical images, and other content to improve patients’ understanding.
These healthcare apps cater to healthcare staff, clinics, doctors, and other providers.
These applications intend to streamline and simplify the billing process as well as automate claims management, accounting, and other administrative tasks. Billing apps boost workflow efficiencies, keep patient information up-to-date, and help cut down on paperwork.
Telehealth solutions are digital applications that allow practitioners to communicate with patients remotely using technology such as video conferencing, audio calls, and chat. They offer a convenient and cost-effective way for doctors to deliver care and reduce the number of no-shows.
As a complimentary EHR/EMR solution, they help manage and keep patient data in one place. Medical records securely collect and store the history of visits, referrals to laboratory tests, vitals, and other information.
Simply put, these are collaboration tools for healthcare personnel. Here, care teams can share their knowledge, communicate on relevant issues, and connect with their colleagues.
Typically, those two terms are used interchangeably to denote the miscellany of mHealth applications in the market. However, medical apps and healthcare solutions target a different audience.
Healthcare apps are designed to help individuals manage their health and wellness. They can track fitness goals, monitor sleep patterns, and provide information on healthy eating and disease prevention.
Conversely, medical apps are designed for use by healthcare professionals. This application category assists with patient management, diagnosis, and treatment.
Against the backdrop of rough competition, companies are struggling to enter and retain markets. To add more traction to your healthcare web app development initiatives, you can augment and base your healthcare solutions on the following trends.
Unlocking user motivation is the key to ensuring mHealth success and driving up your app’s ROI. Gamification in healthcare is a patient-centric way to transform people's habits and behaviors via engaging interface elements, leaderboards, badges, and other incentives.
Gamification is a lucrative market to join — the healthcare gamification market is slated to leap from $3,072.5 million in 2019 to over $35,900 million in 2027 with a CAGR of 36%.
The next generation of telemedicine, doctor-on-demand applications expand healthcare accessibility far beyond the given area of residence. For example, applications such as Amwell and Teladoc, provide 24/7 access to licensed healthcare specialists.
Packed with advanced searching options, e-prescribing, billing, and others, on-demand solutions are a convenient stand-in for traditional healthcare.
From same-day delivery to prescription coupons, pharmacy delivery apps allow patients to find the best medication prices and reduce delivery cycles. Capsule and CVS App are prominent examples in the category. Some apps include features like medicine requirement tracking, prescription history, refills, and others.
The global FemTech market size was $51 billion in 2021 as it was estimated by Precedence Research. The market is poised to grow at a CAGR of 8.12% from 2022 to 2030.
This app type is designed specifically for women’s health and monitoring, including birth control apps, pregnancy trackers, and other health aspects. You may also add dietitians, endocrinologists, counselors, and gynecologists advisory to the app.
Driven by the adoption of wearables, growing data, and innovation, healthcare app development will embrace the following software trends in the coming years.
According to Statista, the value of AI-based solutions in medicine will grow to over $52 billion, by 2026. All types of healthcare software leverage intelligent automation and data analytics to offer advanced features and improved patient experience.
You can embed artificial intelligence into your healthcare app to:
Although in its infancy, virtual reality in healthcare holds great potential in making your application more immersive. Interactive digital models can supplement educational apps for medical students or assist in adjunctive therapy and pain management.
Integration with sensor data is essential for virtual care applications and medication tracking. As IoT devices can automatically collect vitals like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and more, this data can be synced with an app and sent to the doctor’s office.
Similar to other software projects, healthcare app development is a consistent process of building user-friendly and market-viable solutions aligned with its target audience and business objectives. Here’s an action plan for developing a health app.
You should first pinpoint the problem you’re trying to solve with your healthcare app. Will it help with treatment adherence? Is it a telemedicine solution for remote care? Or an internal application to augment the existing system?
If we look at the market prospects analyzed by Statista, we’ll see that fitness, lifestyle, and nutrition applications will continue to hold the largest share of the market by 2025. Disease management and adherence solutions are also given high marks among users.
Whether you’re aiming for custom web app development or a mobile solution, the number and type of platforms will set the tone for the entire healthcare app development process.
The choice of the platform should be based on the target audience. Thus, Insider Intelligence’s research showed that Gen Z and millennials are heavy users of digital technology, while Baby Boomers stick with home computers.
Besides the platform dilemma, customer insights will shed light on the common interests, behavior, and demographics of your users. This will help you direct your marketing resources and brand message to a specific demographic which leads to more conversions and greater application success.
You should then decide on a set of core features based on your audience research and market analysis. For a telemedicine app, these might include staple features such as registration, user profile, specialist search, video calls, appointment scheduling, and payment options.
Almost every application is built with revenue in mind. When it comes to mHealth solutions, here are the most common business models you can integrate:
A well-defined vision requires an experienced app development team. Since a mHealth solution is a complex one, we recommend playing it safe by hiring qualified healthcare app developers from a trusted software development company like CleverDev Software.
The set of core features will lay the ground for your Minimum Viable Product. This is an early version of your mHealth applications with a minimum number of features, enough for the end users to check out your application and give feedback. You can later iterate on the feedback and add additional features to jazz your app up.
There are a few factors that should enter the equation when developing a health app. Some of them incur significant penalties when violated.
If your health application records, stores, manages and sends protected personal information to healthcare providers (e.g., names, SSNs, and others ), it must comply with the HIPAA guidelines. However, if you’re building a fitness application that just collects weight or fitness data, then the solution does not need to comply with the regulation.
The Interoperability and Patient Access final rule is a prominent example of putting the patient first and making health data easily accessible to all sides of care. In healthcare, the need for seamless patient data flow is paramount for timely diagnosis and better treatment.
Technically wise, your healthcare application should integrate natively into the existing business ecosystem and share medical data via secure APIs.
The exact estimation of healthcare software development services can vary based on the location of your development team and project scope.
Below, you’ll find an approximate calculation of healthcare app development costs based on our experience.
Keep in mind that our breakdown includes the costs related to the development stage only.
Business analysis, design, and quality assurance are priced separately and aren’t included in the estimation above. Contact our professionals to get an accurate estimation of your project.
Building a health-related application requires dedicated effort, hands-on experience, and a trusted software development partner. As an experienced healthcare app company, CleverDev Software has a proven track record of delivering HIPAA-compliant, medical solutions to global healthcare providers.
We can either build a full-fledged healthcare product as we did during our RPM project or augment your existing solution with new capabilities like advanced X12 integration.
Our team of healthcare app developers helps mature enterprises, growing mid-level businesses, and ambitious startups to build impactful healthcare applications tailored to unique needs and rigid healthcare regulations.
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