In my years working with mobile health platforms, I’ve seen firsthand how they’ve transformed the way we deliver care. We’ve gone from fragmented, paper-heavy systems to real-time communication and digital health records that patients and providers can access instantly. But as we embrace this digital shift, we also must face the reality that healthcare application security is now one of the biggest challenges.
What’s at stake here isn’t just data — it’s trust. It’s life. When we build or manage healthcare apps, we’re handling some of the most personal, sensitive information that exists. And in my experience, it only takes one overlooked vulnerability to cause irreparable damage. Security can’t be an afterthought. It needs to be part of the DNA of any healthcare app.
What I’ve learned is this: the best healthcare app security strategies aren’t reactive. They’re proactive. They anticipate threats before they happen. Read this article and make sure you’re aware of these principles if you’re managing a healthcare app.
So, why is healthcare application security more important than ever? The short answer: the digital shift. The long answer: As healthcare organizations adopt more technology to offer diagnosis, communication, and data sharing in one place, the attack surface grows.
The pandemic outbreak sped up this shift. Patients and providers leaned heavily on mobile health solutions, and there’s no going back. By 2024, more than 320 million people we're using health apps — a number that keeps rising. Whether it’s Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, or MyChart, these apps have become everyday tools for millions.
Health apps are now deep repositories of sensitive patient information, like protected health information PHI and personally identifiable information (PII). These apps not only include the name and birthdates but also the individual’s medical record, lab results, and insurance details. Mishandling this data has major regulatory penalties under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Breaches of such data can lead to identity theft, insurance fraud, and even unauthorized medical procedures.
The way and level of handling the sensitivity of data make it attractive to hackers. 79% of health apps are sharing data with third parties, which can then be shared with fourth parties. These can be the entry points for vulnerabilities.
Healthcare has become a key target for cyber threats. With incidents over 32% from 2023 to 2024, healthcare is the third most targeted ransomware victim.
The safety of health apps differs. Some are safe when built right. Most health apps employ strong protection measures, using advanced encryption standards. At the same time, some other apps may even lack basic protection. This is common in free and generic health apps built by small developers or startups. These apps lack proper security controls and might not follow the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or GDPR compliance.
If you want to build a secure healthcare app, you have to start by understanding what you’re up against. The threats in this space are real, evolving, and already hitting hard.
It is no surprise that healthcare is such a popular target for threat actors, where patient data is more sensitive, so threat actors believe that they can get paid more quickly because of stealing it. In fact, 71% of all attacks against healthcare organizations are from ransomware attacks. Each incident has affected patient care with an average downtime of 11 days.
Ransomware attacks mostly take place through phishing emails or vulnerable software.
These cause major disruptions to your healthcare systems, with data leakage and costing millions. The Change Healthcare incident in 2024 is a good example of this. This attack led to the theft of the PHI of around 190 million individuals and caused millions of losses to the organization.
Healthcare apps collect and store patient information. When security protocols are not maintained properly within the app, attackers can gain unauthorized access to sensitive patient data. The healthcare industry is more vulnerable due to this, with 62% of data breaches from third parties.
Many healthcare apps are built with open-source libraries, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem starts when these components aren’t kept up to date. Hackers constantly scan for vulnerabilities in these libraries, and an unpatched flaw can open the door to a breach.
Apps that depend on external APIs are only as secure as those connections. When those APIs aren’t maintained or protected, they leave the door wide open for hackers.
Sometimes, the threat isn’t advanced at all. It’s simply that some healthcare apps lack even basic access controls to keep unauthorized users out.
How doctors, nurses, and patients communicate has changed with secure messaging apps for healthcare. These tools make it faster to ask questions and handle emergencies. While they’ll never fully replace face-to-face care, they’re useful for clearing up doubts quickly or responding to certain emergencies.
They also help reduce phone tag and administrative delays, allowing medical teams to stay focused on patient care. Messages can be documented and reviewed later, improving accuracy and continuity. Patients feel more connected and reassured, knowing help is just a message away. For healthcare providers, these apps streamline collaboration and improve response times in critical situations.
Secure mobile apps should have the following features for patient data protection.
If a healthcare messaging app doesn’t have end-to-end encryption, it shouldn’t be on the table. This is the gold standard for a secure medical messaging app. It ensures that only the intended recipient can read the message, no one else, not even the app provider. So even if a message is intercepted in transit, it’s useless to the attacker.
A secure texting app for healthcare must prevent unauthorized users from accessing the account. This is where multi-factor authentication comes in. This will verify the user’s identity through multiple factors. For example:
Both patients and healthcare providers must pass this security barrier every time they want to log into the app. This prevents other people from accessing PHI from stolen credentials or lost devices.
In healthcare, knowing who accessed what and when is a must. Secure texting apps for healthcare keep a detailed log of all activity, so you have full visibility. If something goes wrong, you can trace it. And if a device goes missing, many apps now let you remotely delete sensitive messages, protecting both sides of the conversation.
No message should live forever. A secure messaging app healthcare platform should allow messages to automatically expire — say after 24 hours — so sensitive data isn’t sitting around longer than it needs to.
Developing a healthcare application involves much more than a clean UI and good user experience. Safeguarding patient data is more critical with the rise in cyberattacks.
To build a secure medical app, you must prioritize security, privacy, and regulatory requirements from the beginning.
Healthcare app development must integrate strong security measures like encryption and tokenization of data to prevent possible security risks.
Over the years, I’ve found it helps to come back to the basics, the CIA triad. These aren’t just academic concepts for app developers; they’re the bedrock of building strong healthcare information security.
Confidentiality. Our first job is making sure sensitive data stays in the right hands. That means building role-based access controls, enforcing strong authentication, and encrypting data both at rest and in transit. If unauthorized users can’t get in, that’s half the battle won.
Integrity. In healthcare, the accuracy of data is life critical. We must ensure that medical records, lab results, and prescriptions remain unaltered unless authorized. We do this with digital signatures, tamper detection, and rigorous audit trails.
Availability. None of it matters if systems aren’t there when patients and providers need them. We design for uptime. That means redundancy, load balancing, and cloud-based architectures that can scale and recover fast if something goes wrong.
While the CIA triad defines what needs to be protected, here’s a breakdown of methods to achieve these goals in practice.
Data encryption is a key element in creating a secure medical messaging app. Encryption must be done on all sensitive data, both at rest and in transit. Sensitive patient data like lab reports and medical images should be stored using encryption protocols like AES-256 so that the patient information remains secure, even in the event of a breach.
Through RBAC, you can restrict access to sensitive information based on user roles. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access to the system. For example, a patient can have access to their medical records, while a healthcare provider can have broader access to multiple patients’ records.
Some apps store information on local devices, which can be vulnerable to dangers. Apps can use cloud storage to give real-time access for their users without really saving it locally. Encrypting data before it is uploaded and using secure connections makes the data more protected. Best healthcare technology solutions provide cloud-based storage to share data securely across platforms without creating silos or exposing systems to security vulnerabilities.
Security audits are important to maintain app security. It will provide a thorough evaluation of your app’s infrastructure, codebase, and third-party integrations. Regular audits will confirm HIPAA compliance in Healthcare Apps Development. It will also identify vulnerabilities and verify that all mechanisms are implemented securely.
When you are building an app with these, you are integrating the users' trust into your platform while keeping PHI safe.
Patient data must not only be protected technically, but it should also be handled ethically and legally.
Healthcare apps handle sensitive PHI regularly. This makes them subject to regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in the USA and the GDPR in the EU. These laws establish the minimum security and privacy standards for how this data is handled. They guide you on how to build and maintain the app. For example, the security rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act influences your architecture by requiring safety measures like access control.
Patients and providers are more likely to use a healthcare app if it’s transparent about its privacy practices and compliant with the law.
To build a secure healthcare app, it’s not only important to understand how to develop it but also to have a good understanding of how to test it thoroughly. Security testing plays an important role in healthcare app development. To check the safety, compliance, and reliability of a secure healthcare solutions app, you need to perform a comprehensive security testing.
A healthcare app manages data exchange across different platforms, such as email, mobile devices, and cloud storage. Therefore, the data must be properly encrypted and safeguarded from unauthorized access. SAST will help you with this. It scans your application's source code for security flaws without running it. With SAST, you can validate whether the security measures are implemented correctly.
SAST will detect insecure implementations of authentication, access control, and session handling. It will also identify vulnerabilities like hardcoded encryption keys, insecure algorithms, and improper use of crypto libraries early in the development lifecycle. Apart from that, it makes you follow secure coding practices and raises a question: why code quality is important?
Even a small mistake in healthcare applications can compromise data security. This is why quality code matters. Improving code quality is a good defence strategy. This will reduce the possibility of security issues and help to fix them quickly.
While SAST focuses on source code, DAST evaluates your application during runtime. If you are more concerned with mobile security for healthcare apps, DAST is essential. Most healthcare apps are used on mobile devices, which means they are more exposed to runtime threats. DAST is more important for healthcare apps as it handles sensitive PHI, especially during real-time communication.
With DAST, you can detect potential risks to PHI, like decryption attempts. It simulates real-world attacks like man-in-the-middle and weak SSL/TLS configurations.
When building apps, your teams mostly rely on open-source libraries. SCA scans your third-party components and manages your open-source dependencies. It will protect your app from external threats that come through outdated or neglected modules.SCA will detect vulnerable dependencies and help protect PHI.
Security is not just a feature in healthcare apps. It is an essential part of a secure healthcare app. Patients expect their data to be handled with care, while the app providers must make sure every interaction within the app is protected from risks.
Investing in strong healthcare app security is not only about protecting data, it’s about preserving trust and creating secure healthcare for the future.
CTO & Technology Strategist
Andrei is the Chief Technology Officer at CleverDev Software, with deep expertise in software architecture, cybersecurity, cloud solutions, AI, and blockchain. He designs scalable, secure, and innovative systems that drive business growth. Known for blending technical excellence with strategic vision, Andrei leads teams in building future-ready digital solutions that deliver real value.
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