Telemedicine App Development: Making Healthcare Affordable in 2024

Digitization has already paved its way to healthcare. Today, telemedicine apps and virtual doctor visits are taken for granted. If you think about hopping in this wide-open window of opportunity, this post is for you. Read on about how telehealth apps work, pros and cons, and where to start the telemedicine app development. 

Patient-focus technologies play an essential role in medical care and telemedicine is the key technology transforming healthcare services today. The term was coined in the 1970s and literally means “healing at a distance”. It all started as a way to reach patients in remote locations and supply previously unavailable healthcare services.  

Now, health care professionals use communication technologies to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease and injuries. 

What are the three different types of telehealth software?

• Store-and-forward app (aka asynchronous telemedicine.) The healthcare providers share pre-recorded patient medical information with specialists in other locations. Usually, the shared confidential data are lab reports, X-ray images, videos, and the like. This type is used to diagnose and treat dermatological, ophthalmological, and other issues.
• Remote patient monitoring app (aka telemonitoring.) This allows specialists to track the updates on the patient’s vital signs and activities from the distance. Such virtual doctors are useful for people who suffer from chronic diseases or have recently been released from the hospital. 
• Realtime or live video conferencing apps. Video-conferencing  is often use for primary or urgent care, repeated visits, medication management, and monitoring of chronic illnesses.

These days, telemedicine apps become more complex and offer advanced functionality. such as, adaptive scheduling, multitasking, resource management, healthkit integrations, and AI (chatbots, augmented reality, and virtual reality.)  

Benefits and drawbacks of telemedicine apps

What are the benefits of telemedicine apps? At the times of outbreaks of infectious diseases, the virtual doctor consultation is a critical step forward. In times of pandemic like COVID-19, remote consultation can save from getting infected by the virus. But let’s enumerate the pros of telehealth in general:

• Improving access to healthcare. Telemedicine provides patients access to remotely located specialists and allows to keep the appointments while sick. This reduces missed appointments and allows patients to get the care they need. 
• Reduction of operational costs. Telemedicine apps allow patients to save costs on driving to the hospital, times off work, and parking. On the other hand, hospitals can save funds on maintenance and administrative tasks. 
• Effective appointments. Telemedicine apps simplify appointments, allowing the patients to choose time slots for appointments and cancel when necessary. This reduces load on administrative staff and makes scheduling more efficient. 
• Better monitoring. Doctors can effectively and quickly communicate with discharged patients, which makes monitoring more efficient and improves patient outcomes.
• Reduction of hospital readmissions. As a result, hospital readmissions get reduced, and doctors have more control over their working hours. 

There are also a few drawbacks of this medical care type:

• Without the first-hand examination, the specialist may miss certain symptoms and give an inaccurate diagnosis.
• Private insurance payers and federal health reimbursements don’t cover all services telemedicine provides.
• Personal data collecting, storage, and accessibility should follow HIPAA and GDPR.

Currently, the telemedicine market takes 3,5 billion in USD and the outbreaks of infectious diseases may advance this growth.

Are you considering developing custom telehealth software?  Start with checking out the shortlist of the most popular telemedicine mobile apps.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com

What are the best examples of telemedicine apps?

Lemonaid Health 

This app provides virtual doctor visits and prescriptions for all US citizens. Lemonaid works on Android and iOS platforms. Its workflow is simple. First, you fill out the online questionnaire about the health condition, then dedicated medical team reviews and give related questions. Then, they ship your medicine. Their consultation costs from $25 but the insurance doesn’t cover this service.

MDLive

This app for visiting doctors online supports both iOS and Android versions. To use MDLive, you register an account, find a specialist you need, and then start the consultation. You can communicate with a doctor via phone, app, or website. The insurance covers this service and the basic consultation goes for $82.

Doctor on Demand

The app attracts a large audience due to serving patients with and without insurance. It supports Android or iOS platforms. The app provides you with virtual consultations, doctor's notes (if needed), and clear consultation costs. 

Babylon Healthcare Services

This telemedicine app gives you access to healthcare information services and medical prescriptions. Also, it allows to schedule appointments with qualified professionals, straight from your phone. Babylon works for iOS and Android platforms. The app asks questions, evaluates answers, and factors in risks using AI technology. After that it directs the patient to a relevant specialist. 

Dialogue

This app delivers telemedicine for companies. Key features include live chat and video consultations with specialists from various medical branches, the prescription renovations, and free delivery. Dialogue stores your data, so there is no need to provide it during every interaction with a doctor.

How to develop a telemedicine app?

Developing a telemedicine app is a comprehensive process that requires careful planning and execution across several phases. Here's a more detailed breakdown of the telemedicine app development steps:  

Market Research and Analysis.  Study existing telehealth apps to understand their strengths and gather insights from potential users to identify unmet needs and desired features. Familiarize yourself with the healthcare regulations such as HIPAA in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe that affect telemedicine apps. 

Requirement Gathering and Planning. Define what the app will do and how it will fulfill user needs. List out essential features for MVP and additional features for future versions. Together with your development partner, fevelop use case scenarios to understand how different users will interact with your app. Outline the project scope, estimate costs, and define timelines for development phases.

UI/UX design Phase. At this stage, designers, will develop simple sketches or digital wireframes that map out the primary features and flow. Then, they will create an interactive prototype to simulate the UX and gather feedback. They will also choose colors, typography, icons, and buttons – ensuring the design aligns with the brand’s identity. 

Technical Planning. Together with your development team, define the technological stack and architectural framework of the app. Technical experts will help you choose appropriate technologies for front-end (e.g., React Native, Xamarin), back-end (e.g., Node.js, Ruby on Rails), and server/database management (e.g., AWS, Firebase). Plan for integrating third-party APIs for functionalities like video conferencing, payment gateways, and analytics. 

Security Measures. Implement encryption, authentication protocols, and other security measures to protect sensitive data. 

Development. Build the application by translating designs and plans into a working product. It's recommended to develop each feature in manageable modules, focusing on the core of MVP initially. Your team will regularly integrate code into a shared repository to ensure team alignment and early detection of issues. 

Testing and Quality Assurance. Before release, you need to ensure the app functions correctly, securely, and efficiently. Your team will test individual components for functionality and reliability to make sure that the mapp functions as intended across various scenarios. They will also run audits and vulnerability assessments to secure data and comply with relevant regulations. 

Deployment and Release. Launch the app in the market. Often, a beta version is released nto a limited audience to gather last-minute feedback and make necessary refinements. Take care to coordinate with the marketing team to promote the app ahead of the official release date. 

Now, let's talk about the telemedicine software features your app should have. The telehealth app has two types of users so there are two lists of must-keep features. Let’s list them out.

Source: https://ddi-dev.com/uploads/telemedicine-app-platform.jpg

Patient’s functionality:

• Sign in process. Consider a multiple-way: email, phone, social media profiles. The two-factor authentication is vital as your app will deal with sensitive data.
• Profile should store personal information (i.e., name, age, weight, and the like) and  health-related data (i.e., illnesses, allergies, blood type, and so on.) The feature to add X-ray scans and lab results will be also useful.
• Search bar and filters. The patient needs to find a required specialist fast. For the MVP make a limited list of filters: specialization, doctor credentials, review, rates, and so on.
• Calendar allows a patient to schedule and manage the appointments.
• Geolocation is required for prescription shipping or pharmacies nearby.
• Communication. You can offer a live chat, in-app calls, or live video calls. Provide options for transferring images, audio, and video files. The messages are better to get encrypted to ensure patient confidentiality.
• Push notifications will remind the patient about the upcoming appointments.
• Payment. You can realize it in a few ways: credit card, PayPal/Stripe, medical insurance, or employer coverage.
• Review and rating. Quality care gets good responses from patients and helps to attract new users. Besides, the choice of a specialist becomes more informed.

Doctor’s functionality:

• Profile. Enable the basic doctor’s info: specializations, education, experience. Don’t forget about the other credentials that patients may want to check.
• Calendar helps specialists to organize the working hours and show time spots available for scheduling.
• Communication options in MVP should be equal to those you offer for patients.
• EHR (electronic medical record) software. Consider the integration of EHR to smooth the workflow and usability of the app. Doctors should have access to accurate information on the patient’s medical data.
• Medical prescription makes it possible to give the prescription in the digital form. Due to the geolocation of the patient, doctors can send it to the nearest pharmacy.
• Dashboard with question queries, payments, appointments, and so on. This way the specialists can organize their work and make the necessary changes.

Another essential part is the admin dashboard. It should connect and facilitate the management of the patient and doctor functionalities.

Admin dashboard functionality:

• Patient management
• Doctor management
• Calendar and appointment management
• Notification management
• Payment management

How much does it cost to develop a telemedicine app?

When things are clear with the business idea and MVP scope, the next step is figuring out the development costs. Everything depends on such aspects:

• functionality
• UX/UI
• platforms
• technology stack
• per hour rate of a development team

One of the most efficient ways to build your app is to hire a development agency. This kind of application isn’t a novice. You can even see the app samples that are already live before choosing a team for your project.

What are the challenges of telehealth app development?

Every industry has some challenges during the realization of apps and software. In telemedicine, you will need to handle such roadblocks as

• UI/UX adoption. The layouts of the patient’s app and doctor’s app vary. So the two versions of the app have to be compatible with each other. You need an experienced designer to address this challenge properly.
• Back-end environment. You may think about integrating third-party services into your application. Start with studying their documentation to ensure that using them you won’t violate any privacy policies.
• Security. Encrypt personal and health data. Make sure you are also using the encryption protocols for the text, voice, and video chats. 
• Compliance with health legislation. During your app development, you should be aware of regulatory standards. To be more specific: HIPAA and HITECH (for the US), PIPEDA (for Canada), GDPR, the Data Protection Directive 1995/46/EC and the e-Privacy Directive 2002/58/EC/ IEC 62304 (for European Union).

Wrap up

Are you intimidated by setting up developing your telemedicine app? Don’t be. Telehealth applications are on the rise now, as well as the whole niche. You know the key offers on the market and the competitors’ functionality. Also, you are aware of possible challenges and noted the spots your app can improve. So it is time to shape your idea into an app. Schedule a call with Apiko and we’ll help you to build a feasible and legally compliant telemedicine app.  Our telemedicine app development company can also develop a fully-fledged healthcare workforce management solution. 

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