Medical App Development: What to expect in the future

Market outlook: mHealth app development growth drivers

The global mHealth industry (or mobile health industry) is one of the most promising and fast-developing sectors in the medical industry.

An increased need for personalized service, the growing usage of smartphones, and the implications of the pandemic are just a few of the factors responsible for driving the rapid growth of mHealth.

The demand for digital health applications comes from both patients and healthcare providers. As more and more people want access to more tools to monitor their wellbeing, healthcare providers have raced to meet the demand by providing users with accessible mobile apps.

The annual value of the global mHealth market could surpass $805 billion by 2030. To put this in perspective, as of 2020, it was worth $56 billion according to data from Global Market Insights.

What types of mHealth apps are there?

To understand the mHealth app development market better, let’s take a closer look at some main healthcare application categories.

Remote monitoring apps

After the COVID-19 pandemic came into full swing, the demand for remote care and patient monitoring has grown exponentially. Remote monitoring applications allow clinicians to track key health information from patients located miles away.

These applications can monitor heart rate, blood-oxygen levels, blood glucose, and much more.

Telemedicine apps

As with remote apps, many doctors and patients across different healthcare sectors have made the switch to online consultations. Telehealth and telemedicine apps encompass a wide variety of functions, including appointment scheduling, prescriptions, consultancy, diagnosis, and more.

Health tracking & wellness apps

Wellness and fitness applications have been booming over the last few years. The global fitness app market is steadily growing and is estimated to reach $10.5 billion by 2026.

It’s no wonder that over 71,000 health and fitness apps were launched globally in 2020. These applications feature subcategories, including wellness, diet, nutrition, fitness, and activity tracking tools.

Clinical and diagnostic apps

Disease diagnosing apps allow patients to input symptoms, receive a diagnosis, and schedule appointments. Clinicians use these applications to acquire patient data, determine accurate treatment, prescribe medication, and analyze results.

Hospital management apps

Apps for medical facility management are usually created for enterprise workers, but often, they include patient profiles as well. These applications facilitate cross-department cooperation and data exchange throughout hospitals.

The technologies and trends of medical application development

Investors and startups that wish to take advantage of this sector should consider the trends and technologies that currently drive the mHealth industry.

AI & Chatbots

AI-enabled apps can greatly improve the overall customer experience and quality of care. Over the years, more and more patients have expressed an interest in monitoring their health. As a result, artificial intelligence has stepped up to the plate to sustain this growing need.

Chatbots and virtual assistants can perform tasks, provide health updates and insights, process patient requests, check on medication schedules, and book appointments. They can even recommend further steps down the road.

Chatbots should ideally be developed and used to collect and interpret critical data, provide recommendations, and produce tailored insights. Healthcare app providers should keep in mind that users are often more vulnerable when it comes to their health.

This requires more empathy and consideration in relation to customer support.

Developing useful, responsive, customized assistants that can be trusted not to leak essential patient information should be a priority for medical app investors and creators.

AR\VR

Virtual and augmented reality technology can be applied to medical applications in various ways. In fact, this is one of the most promising tech trends when it comes to digital health. According to Allied Market Research, the market for virtual and augmented reality products in healthcare is expected to reach $2.4 billion by 2026.

The ability to add virtual layers and projections, like body parts or an extended visualization of the surgery process, has made AR-enabled devices ideal when it comes to advanced human body research, therapy procedures for patients, and assisting clinicians to make treatment decisions.

It has also changed the game when it comes to surgery preparation and predicting the body’s response.

Aside from clinicians, the advantages of augmented reality visualization also extend to patients.

Nothing interests patients more than a visually appealing and straightforward representation of their therapy results. Gamification and personalization trends can also be utilized to make tedious healthcare facts far more interesting and engaging to users.

For example, clinicians can provide patients with before and after images of their organs or appearance — before surgery has even been conducted.

Virtual reality, on the other hand, can be used to provide an entirely digital world complete with enhanced 3D representation for a variety of purposes.

Doctors can make use of virtual simulations to gain insight into the distribution of medication, effectively regulate chemical treatment, and improve treatment planning to eliminate risk.

For patients, virtual reality (VR) can be used to divert sensitive patients from uncomfortable invasive treatments with entertaining projections and visuals to catch the patient’s attention.

Wearable tech integration

As many modern health applications work in tandem with wearable fitness gadgets, the ability to interact with external monitoring tools is essential.

Applications and devices work together to form an ecosystem to collect data and provide insight into a user’s health routine, objectives, and progress.

Healthcare wearables take data visualization to a whole new level to provide insight into a user’s health. People want to be involved in the treatment process. As a result, health monitoring is becoming increasingly popular.

Health tracking apps in combination with wearables can prevent dangerous health issues and lower the risk of cardiac arrest.

Telemedicine

Many patients have had to adjust to virtual visits due to the pandemic. As such, investment in telehealth startups has tripled, soaring from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $3.1 billion in 2020.

As people become more interested in virtual treatment, health experts predict that telemedicine may replace up to 40% of general medical visits in the near future.

This poses a terrific opportunity for healthcare entrepreneurs to deliver competitive medical apps to meet the demand.

Inclusive and personalized UX

Customization and inclusivity have been trending for a long time; their importance shows no signs of stopping. When it comes to designing marketable medical mobile applications, it’s critical to address the wants and needs of users which crave engaging, inclusive, and all-around personalized solutions.

To make it easy for users to monitor their health, it’s critical to pay attention to insights related to user behavior. With this information in hand, it’s much easier to enhance and customize the user experience.

It’s also crucial to remember that different medical applications are created for different people. When it comes to healthcare apps, it’s difficult to accommodate a wide range of ages, genders, races, sexual orientations, and physical and mental capacities in a single device.

Some users will be disabled; others will have incurable or fatal diseases. Many will have chronic medical conditions. In addition to useful features, inclusive designs are the future of healthcare applications.

Making sure your interface and features are accessible, straightforward, and easy to use across user groups can dramatically boost the odds of an app’s success.

Medical app development: what’s next?

A clear interface, responsive and improved functionality, and interesting data insights will not only alleviate patient stress but also increase the efficiency of treatment.

Although many companies have begun to realize the potential of the healthcare mobile app development market, there are still numerous gaps to fill in terms of features, technology, service, and design.

In the upcoming years, the medical app sector will continue to soar, with particular emphasis on wellness applications and health tracking tools. Additionally, more niche technologies are expected to emerge in the near future — just look at the spike in mental health apps.

There are numerous ways developers can enhance product attractiveness, usability, and performance. From immersive VR experiences to wearable tech, the potential is unlimited.

mHealth app development with Glorium

Our team has the expertise and experience required to enhance and/or build your medical applications from scratch. Whether you’re in need of mHealth app development company to provide IT consultation, robust application testing, skilled mHealth app developers, or implementing the technology required to enhance software security capabilities, we’ve got you covered.

With extensive experience in mHealth app development and a profound understanding of critical regulations, there is no challenge that we can’t meet.

Learn more about our software and application development solutions today.

AboutAnna Voznaya

Delivery Officer and VP of Sales with Glorium Technologies. My role is to constantly improve cooperation, integration, communication, customer relationships, and lead the department to success through sharing the company's vision among team members.