A Comprehensive Guide to Telemedicine App Development

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Telemedicine is making healthcare more accessible, reducing inequality, and enhancing flexibility. According to a McKinsey report, 60% of patients prefer telemedicine over traditional, in-person appointments. That’s why telemedicine app development is so large within healthcare organizations Remote medical services solve a lot of problems, including the predicted shortage of medical professionals and healthcare providers.

According to Fortune Business Insight, the telemedicine market promises to reach $559.52 billion by 2027. So, having your telehealth app is not just important but vital.

We created this guide to help you explore various ways of developing telemedicine apps, as well as the timeline, costs, and other insights.

What is a Telemedicine App, and How Does it Work?

Telemedicine provides medical services remotely using digital technologies, including mobile apps, smartwatch apps, and others. If you want to develop a telemedicine app, we need to discuss the difference between telemedicine and telehealth.

Telehealth platforms cover a more comprehensive range of services, including telemedicine, education, telepharmaceuticals, and other non-clinical services that are eligible for remote delivery. Telemedicine focuses on clinical applications.

There are several modes of medical services available through a telemedicine app:

A telemedicine app can be universal or specialized. A universal telemedicine app is, in fact, a marketplace with the services of various doctors, usually self-employed. A specialized telemedicine app belongs to a clinic. The benefits of deploying a telemedicine app, proven by practical application, are hard to overestimate for doctors and patients.

Why Build a Telemedicine Platform: Benefits for Doctors and Patients

Telemedicine software development is redefining the present state of the healthcare industry, and it’ll forever change how we receive medical care. It’s connecting providers and patients worldwide, and while the telehealth app development process itself is challenging, with a focused team and a clear vision, it represents an opportunity to take part in the transformative change of healthcare delivery.

Telemedicine apps benefit everyone: patients have flexible access to healthcare, and doctors can effectively manage their time and treat patients.

Benefits of telemedicine apps for healthcare providers

Telemedicine software has several types of audiences, but doctors are one of the most essential. They interact with the app directly and their input can also be included in the testing and maintenance stage, which we will discuss later.

Here are the benefits of telemedicine app development for doctors:

Data centralization and monitoring
Telemedicine apps have a monitoring system and a database. All patient health information is kept in the electronic record format (EHR). Access to EHR improves treatment efficiency and reduces the risk of medical errors.

Schedule optimization
Generally, healthcare providers work 60-80 hours weekly, and 15% of them admit they’re susceptible to depression. This is an indicator of a challenging work-life balance, affecting the mental well-being of the providers. Telemedicine can help doctors balance their workload and distribute them more evenly.

Automation of administrative processes
A telehealth app can help healthcare providers automate workflows, minimize filing reports, and maintain medical records. This decreases the time spent on routine work, leaving more time for patient care.

Service quality assurance
With remote services, doctors can spend more time on each patient and prescribe treatment faster, positively impacting the quality of the services.

Around 60% of professionals noted telemedicine’s effectiveness in serving patients from cities, suburbs, and villages. Almost 70% of specialists expressed a desire to expand the use of telemedicine in their practice.

Benefits of telemedicine apps for patients

Getting ready, hopping on public transport, spending hours in the waiting room, and other pre-appointment traditions are challenging to fit into our daily lives. Many patients have noted that physically seeing the doctor whenever a minor issue occurs is daunting, so they prefer remote services such as telemedicine platforms.

Here are some of the benefits that delights patients:

• Search for specialized professionals: The shortage of medical professionals is a large issue for patients seeking effective healthcare experiences. Telemedicine services allow them to look for and schedule appointments with doctors all over the world. Such platforms are extremely handy in urgent care situations
• Comprehensive home treatment: Telemedicine is exceptionally effective for patients who have flu, cold, seasonal allergies, or other minor issues that can easily be treated at home with over-the-counter medicine. SingeCare survey results show that 69% of patients use telemedicine to treat common illnesses and 44% – for chronic ones
• Scheduled examinations and health monitoring: More than 65% of patients are remotely monitored after hospitalization, and about 35% must undergo annual examinations. Telemedicine saves time on trips to the clinic and waiting in line
• Access to medical data: Patients can view their medical records saved in electronic documents and send them to specialized specialists and family members using the application

Some patients and doctors still prefer face-to-face interactions, and that’s okay. However, a survey by SingleCare shows that 78% of patients are satisfied with telemedicine services, while 42% think they saved time, and 36% think the online meeting was pleasant and successful. Therefore, it is no surprise that the healthcare industry is now in high demand in the mobile app development market.

Must-Have Features of the Telemedicine Apps in 2024

You can build your own appointment scheduling app and make it custom-suited to your business needs, but you should keep in mind these general features that make the telemedicine apps.

Must-have features include personalized calendar integration, appointment reminders, and automated appointment confirmations. Additionally, the app should offer remote scheduling for telehealth visits, provide a secure patient portal, and allow for easy management of patient records.

If you want to create a “total package” app, make sure your development team integrates payment acceptance features into the billing system. It would also be a great touch to add a booking for recurring appointments and provide physicians with analytics and reporting tools to help them understand patient trends and make better decisions.

Must-have features for healthcare providers

If you want to build a telemedicine app, you should consider these two categories: healthcare providers and patients. They will be your main customers, and you need to create an app that caters to their needs.

Profile
Create a profile feature for your healthcare provider audience to allow them to register and provide detailed information about themselves. They can include their specialization, experience, competencies, and more.

This section serves as a comprehensive overview for patients, helping them make informed decisions when selecting a healthcare provider. Doctors can showcase their credentials, areas of expertise, educational background, certifications, and professional affiliations, thereby establishing trust and credibility with potential patients.

Calendar
Adding the calendar to your app enables healthcare professionals to manage their schedules efficiently, monitor appointments, and accommodate changes based on requests. This feature enhances time management and organization, allowing doctors to optimize their availability and ensure seamless coordination with patients. With intuitive scheduling capabilities, doctors can avoid double bookings, set reminders for upcoming appointments, and maintain a structured workflow for delivering patient care.

Access to electronic health records (EHR)
Healthcare providers need to review information about their patients to help them with diagnosis, medication changes, and more. Granting them access to the database allows them to view electronic medical records (EMRs) and obtain comprehensive data.

Adding this feature to your providers’ side of the app is essential to help them make informed decisions, provide personalized care, and streamline the diagnostics and treatment process. Additionally, seamless integration with EHR systems ensures data accuracy, confidentiality, and compliance with healthcare regulations.

Communication channels
One of the reasons telemedicine apps are so popular and helpful is the ability to communicate with doctors and patients. Communication channels are essential for telemedicine apps to allow healthcare providers to interact with their patients.

This can happen via text messages, voice calls, or video sessions. The best solution is to add all three options. This feature is highly effective when the doctors’ schedule is all booked, but they still need to provide ongoing support to other patients, monitor their medication intake, and more.

Document exchange
Everyone who’s ever been to a doctor’s office knows how much document-transferring goes on there. Healthcare providers print and hand out prescriptions, diagnoses, insurance documents, and so on. Without an efficient document exchange feature, telemedicine wouldn’t work.

With this feature in the app, doctors can electronically transmit prescriptions and referrals to pharmacies and diagnostic centers, eliminating the need for paper-based documentation.

Payment management
Payment management functionality enables doctors to receive payment for services rendered through a built-in payment gateway. This streamlines the billing process and enhances financial transparency. Patients can conveniently make payments for consultations, treatments, and other services directly through the app, with automatic generation and sending of receipts for completed transactions.

This feature simplifies payment reconciliation, reduces administrative burdens, and ensures timely and secure processing of payments, enhancing the overall patient experience and facilitating efficient revenue management for healthcare providers.

Must-have features for patients

On the other side of your telemedicine app, patients will receive care from their doctors. We have already discussed the doctor’s side of the app and its essential features. Now, it’s time to explore the must-have features for patients.

Patients should quickly and easily be able to schedule appointments, manage them, receive reminders, and view past visit history. They should feel comfortable contacting their providers directly from the app and requesting follow-ups.

While the doctor’s side of the app mainly concentrates on improving workflow, the patient’s side focuses on the user’s well-being, sending them health tips, important updates, and other information.

These are the must-have features of telemedicine apps that patients will love:

Registration
Mobile apps are known for their account creation features. A personal account is a space where users don’t fear sharing their characteristics. Your app should have a registration feature that allows patients to create an account within the app, provide personal information, and personalize their experience.

Health records
Patients need access to their medical records, including electronic health records (EHRs). They should be able to securely view their medical history, diagnoses, medications, and treatment plans within the app. This feature caters to the needs of patients and encourages them to take care of their well-being.

Calendar
Appointment management becomes more accessible if it’s synchronized and integrated with Google Calendar or other primary calendar options. With this feature, patients will be able to schedule, view, and manage appointments seamlessly.

Most calendars have notification features that remind the users about upcoming events and appointments. So, this feature minimizes the risks of missed visits.

Geolocation
The geolocation feature is great for patients who are looking for nearby medical professionals and pharmaceutical facilities. This feature enables patients to locate healthcare providers, pharmacies, and other relevant services based on their current location, enhancing accessibility and convenience.

Search
The search feature is a must-have for all apps, especially for telemedicine apps. Patients can easily search for specialists based on various criteria such as profile, location, language, or rating. This feature facilitates informed decision-making by allowing patients to find healthcare providers that best meet their specific needs and preferences.

Communication channels
Similar to healthcare providers, patients also benefit from communication channels in the app. Your telemedicine app should offer multiple communication methods, including video, chat, and voice. This allows patients to communicate with their healthcare providers without booking additional physical visits and without intruding on them.

Payments
Transactions for healthcare services are facilitated through built-in payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, or Braintree. Patients can securely make payments for appointments, treatments, and other services directly within the app, streamlining the billing process and ensuring financial transactions are conducted with ease and transparency.

Rating
Rating and reviews system has been known to help other users find suitable healthcare providers. Your telemedicine app should have a rating system where patients can provide feedback and evaluate the quality of service. This not only helps patients express themselves, report incomplete service, or give recommendations but also helps other users to find trusted and helpful professionals.

How to Build a Telemedicine Platform: 4 Essential Stages

Building a telemedicine app isn’t as simple as following four steps, but we can describe the development process in four essential stages that will give you direction.

Initiation

• Project potential assessment and business analysis: At the initiation stage, you need to analyze the competitors, research the target audience, determine user characters and their stories, and map the customer journey
• Study of software requirements: You need to study and define the requirements for telemedicine application, industry regulations (HIPAA, HITECH, etc.), and standards
• Function prioritization: Finally, a set of valuable functions for business users (doctors) and target audiences (patients) is being compiled

It is crucial to create a minimum viable product (MVP) with the main features to test your idea in real life and validate that there is demand for it. Only after being able to sell MVP is it worth investing in further development and improvement.

We come across cases when founders don`t get enough interest from a market to their MVP, and instead of accepting it and switching to working on another idea, they invest tons of resources into developing some extra features to make this product more appealing. It is a core mistake as if the big idea isn`t successful, no additional functionality will improve it. So, MVP is needed to ensure you are moving in the right direction.

Anton Kumechko

Project Manager, Glorium Technologies

Planning and architecture design

• Planning: Planning stage involves reproducing the basic logic of the application, distributing functionality across screens, and setting up logical connections between screens to ensure a high-quality user experience. It is executed based on custom scripts and a client path.
• Design: You need to render all screens and graphic interface elements, like buttons, logos, icons, fonts, and animations, based on the brand book

Development and Testing

• Development: The development stage is essential, so you must take care of architecture, data exchange structures, organizing a database, developing server scripts, creating an admin panel, deploying and configuring logging systems, the layout of screens and animations, setting up logic, implementing API functionality, and adapting to Android and iOS platforms
• Testing and bug fixing: At this stage, you’ll also need to maintain and support your app, so continuous testing, bug detection, and elimination are essential for quality assurance

Certification and Launch

• Certification: Telemedicine apps handle sensitive data, so you must ensure you comply with state standards and norms. For example, HIPAA in the US, 1995/46/EC (data protection), and 2002/58/EC/IEC 62304 (electronic data privacy) in Europe, the general regulation of the GDPR
• Deployment: Finally, you can place your application in the App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store

Tech Stack Used in Telemedicine App Development

Telemedicine app development is a tricky process and requires professional attention, expertise, and a specific tech stack.

The number and specificity of modern technologies implemented in the application are one of the factors that determine the final to create a telemedicine app and development cost.

Telemedicine App Development Cost

It is easy to calculate the cost of software development if you know the approximate time to complete the project. To find out how long it takes to develop an application for Android and iOS, you need to estimate the timing of the stages roughly.

To calculate the cost of telemedicine solution development, it is required to estimate what experts to involve and how much time each of them is to spend. So, the budget depends on the complexity of a project.

Clarification of the client’s request and rough estimations of resources needed is done during the initial phase of implementing a project, which is discovery, when we define requirements for the future solution, determine the solution plan, technical team composition, and product details. After it is done, we provide rough budget estimates so that a client can understand the lower and upper bounds of the cost.

Within the project implementation, a client gets a detailed report with the precise cost of work done on a monthly basis.

Anna Vozna

Client Success Manager, Glorium Technologies

The final cost of the app depends on many factors: the complexity of the functionality, the scale of the project, the technology stack, and the developer’s location. If you want affordable pricing, telemedicine app development services will always help you avoid double work and keep costs low.

If you are looking for a reliable provider to build your own telemedicine application, choose one with experience in the field, familiar with the specific requirements and technical aspects of developing a telemedicine app. This includes understanding the various regulations and standards that must be followed and the security protocols necessary to protect patient data.

For example, the Glorium Technologies team is well-versed in the latest trends and technologies in the telemedicine market. Contact us today to find out how we build telemedicine apps, how we can help you embody your idea, and get an approximate project scope.

Telemedicine app development costs may include:

Core feature set: Developing essential features like video consultations, appointment scheduling, electronic health record (EHR) integration, and secure messaging forms the foundation of the app. The complexity and customization of these features can impact development costs.

Compliance and security: It ensures compliance with healthcare regulations (HIPAA and etc.) and implements robust security measures to protect patient data are critical aspects that may incur additional expenses.

User experience (UX) design: Crafting an intuitive and user-friendly interface enhances patient engagement and satisfaction. Costs associated with UX design depend on the level of customization and complexity desired.

Platform compatibility: Building the app for multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and web requires additional development efforts and may increase costs accordingly.

Integration with existing systems: Integrating the telemedicine app with existing healthcare systems, such as EMRs or practice management software, may involve additional expenses for customization and interoperability testing.

Maintenance and support: Ongoing maintenance, updates, and technical support services are essential for ensuring the smooth functioning and longevity of the telemedicine app. Budgeting for these recurring costs is crucial for long-term success.

Overall, while telemedicine app development cost may vary depending on the specific requirements and scope of the project, investing in quality development and compliance measures is essential for creating a reliable and effective healthcare solution.

Our Expertise

Let’s talk about MouthWatch – an excellent product and a pioneer in dental technology. They developed an impressive teledentistry platform featuring a specialized intraoral camera for remote diagnostics. Diagnosing dental diseases remotely seems unimaginable, but they manage it.

One issue arose, though. Integrating this camera with a modern software platform was challenging.

Glorium Technologies team devised a comprehensive platform that facilitated appointment scheduling through its interface and enabled smooth integration with other scheduling systems. The platform could support large-scale web conferences, accommodating up to 2,000 participants. This feature underscored our teams’ capability to deliver large-scale healthcare communication needs solutions.

As it’s requested when developing telehealth and telemedicine apps, our team adhered to HIPAA standards and ensured the platform was secure and scalable. This consideration was crucial for maintaining patient data privacy and meeting the evolving demands of healthcare providers.

As the demand for high-quality telemedicine apps and telehealth platforms surges, Glorium Technologies stands at the forefront, enabling healthcare providers to connect with patients and offer remote healthcare services efficiently.

Summary

Telemedicine app development and telehealth applications remain ahead of the curve when it comes to transforming healthcare delivery systems and improving the accessibility, convenience, and efficiency of care. With the progressive evolution of technology and changes in legal frameworks, the potential for further development of telemedicine software is still enormous.

It is important to be up to date with the latest trends such as new innovations in the development of telemedicine apps, focus on security and privacy measures, as well as keeping abeast with the ever changing legal frameworks that govern the development of telemedicine apps.

Thus, if you provide healthcare services, user trust may be gained through open practices, and by examining various monetization options, telemedicine apps can revolutionize the industry.

When it comes to the development of telemedicine apps, one should work with a reliable company with significant experience in the field of healthcare technologies.

By building the right team and ensuring that your telemedicine app is of high quality and adheres to the necessary compliance standards, your program has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and improve patient experience around the globe. Contact us, and let`s redefine the future of healthcare.

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