Telemedicine App Development: an Easier Access to Healthcare

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, people realized how much professional mobile app development transforms our lives and how many opportunities they give. When people had to stay home, telemedicine apps came in handy and helped to reduce the healthcare providers’ workload that used to work up a sweat in hospitals.

Today, the pandemic is under control but the changes it brought are still in place and also are gaining momentum. Telemedicine is no exception and according to Statista, the telemedicine segment will hit $559.52 billion by 2027.

The telemedicine app development has brought new opportunities and positive changes, so becoming one of the agents of improving healthcare services can be a really great idea.

This article is an excellent reference for those who are thinking about telemedicine app development, hospital app development, or another type of healthcare app development. It will answer such questions as “ what is a telemedicine app and what benefits does it bring”, and “how to create a telemedicine app”, and also touch on the cost of a telemedicine app.

What Is Telemedicine? And Why Create a Telemedicine App?

Telemedicine is the means to provide healthcare services remotely via an application. Usually, telemedicine requires three things to be used by both healthcare providers and patients:

• Microphone;
• Camera;
• Application.

If the first two things come together with laptops or can be bought in a store, the software is more tricky. Sure thing one may find a ready-made solution and apply it into practice. However, if you’re looking for an application to meet all your needs, it’s better to consider developing one from scratch. Here’s what you get with telemedicine application development.

Healthcare Gets More Accessible

Thanks to the chance to get healthcare services remotely, creating a telemedicine app gives the chance for a bigger number of people get to access healthcare. In addition to easier access to medical care, remote medical care eliminates the need for financial expenses for travel and accommodation for people living in remote areas and for those who require special conditions for transportation. Thanks to the telemedicine app development solutions, it’s enough to have access to the internet to get healthcare services.

Better Health Monitoring

The health condition may get worse during the time between consultations. As telemedicine apps give the opportunity to contact healthcare professionals as soon as the need arises.

In this regard, telemedicine allows us to take quick measures and correct treatment. Hence, the risks related to health deterioration get reduced.

Reduced Paperwork

Paperwork takes a significant amount of healthcare providers’ working time. Telemedicine apps allow to fill in digital forms and provide data that is later stored within the app. Also, it gives quick access to the records, helps monitor dynamics, etc.

By reducing the paperwork workload, the doctors may increase the focus on the work with patients.

Increased Efficiency

The medical test, examinations, diagnoses, allergies, scans, and other Drs’ opinions are stored and accessible with one touch on the screen. Having all of them gathered together may help doctors to better diagnose, prescribe treatment, monitor effectiveness, etc.

Telemedicine App Development Features

Any telemedicine app development project requires three user roles: patient, healthcare providers, and admins. Hence, telemedicine app developers need to create an interface for each.

Also, when creating the interfaces, the feature needs to be considered to build a telemedicine platform that solves the problems of all user roles. Depending on the needs, the feature list may be stretched up and down but there are telemedicine app features common for all.

Patients’ Interface Features

• Sign-up and log-in
• Profile creation and management
• Filtered search to find a doctor or service
• Choose a healthcare provider from the list
• Video and audio calling
• Text messenger
• Calendar to display a doctor’s free appointment and view scheduled appointments
• Payments system with multiple payment methods
• Notification system

Healthcare Provider’s Features

• Sign-up and log-in
• Doctor profile creation and administration
• Calendar to view the schedule
• Appointment approval
• Access to EHRs
• Communication tools: video and audio calls, text, and voice messages.
• Notification system

Admin Panel Features

• Doctors manage tools to schedule appointments, view availability, and workload, schedule vacations, day-offs, etc.
• Patient managing tool to access EHRs, appointments, payments, etc.
• AI-powered appointment scheduling to ease the process and balance the doctors’ workload.

Telemedicine App Development Cost

When it comes to development, there’s never one figure that could be applied to all. The final sum required for the app development lies in the various influencing factors: geolocation, hourly rates, app type, complexity, etc. The same goes for telemedicine app development cost.

Taking into account that the team of front-end developers, back-end developers, an UI/UX designer, a BA, a PM, a QA engineer, and a DevOps engineer is required to create a telemedicine app, the average cost for a basic telehealth app will be the following across the various regions:

If you have an idea in mind and question “how much does it cost to develop a telemedicine app”, contact us for cost calculations.

How to Make a Telemedicine App

The points to consider are covered, now it’s time to get down to brass tacks about how to build a telemedicine app. The development cycle encompasses several stages that may remind the building of construction. Each stage is like a block. If a block will be put on the other block, they will make a wall. The same goes for development, going through stages will result in a telehealth application. We gathered the stages in a single telemedicine app development guide to give a clear picture of how to make a telemedicine app.

Determining an Operating System and Discovery

We believe that any development should be set off with the research. The research helps to take the decision related to the app that will bring it to success and be able to solve the problems. Also, the research results help to plan the development cycle and divide it into sprints, define a roadmap, determine the feature set, etc.

Later, all the project details are put together in a document called SRS, System Requirements Specification.

Also, in this stage, we’d like to single out the selection of OS. Which operating system to choose relies on your budget, needs, and the devices it’s going to be used. This information is also gathered from the research.

You may want to make an iOS telemedicine app due to the iOS users’ loyalty or build a telemedicine app for android due to the greater user number. However, the development of a cross-platform app will make it possible to harvest the benefits of both. It’s up to you which option to choose.

Telemedicine App Design

The design of telemedicine applications has its own nuances. First, it must be intuitive and as simple as possible so that it can be used by people with any level of computer literacy, including the elderly. Secondly, it should be designed with various visual impairments in mind. For example, it is worth adding the ability to increase the font for people with low vision, add a special color scheme for people with color blindness, use color schemes for visually impaired people, add a screen sound function for the visually disabled, and so on. Fortunately, solutions have long been found, all that needs to be done is to implement them in design development.

Development

It's not hard to guess that at this stage the code is written for the backend and frontend, the architecture is created, and the APIs and third-party services are integrated according to the requirements.

QA

To ensure that a telemedicine application runs smoothly for the user, you must first make sure that it is working properly for you. This is what testing is for. Testers do all sorts of tests to make sure there are no bugs in the app, the functions work as intended, the app doesn't crash or lag, and so on. A smoothly running application is the key to quick and easy access to medical services.

Launch, Maintenance, and Support

When an app is developed, tested, and ready to ship to devices, it is uploaded to stores.

But the work doesn't end there; promotion, support, and upgrades are underway. The task of developers at this stage is to eliminate bugs, if any, to work on updates when the need increases, and to deal with scalability.

Celadon is a Trusted Partner to Create a Telemedicine App

Looking for a team to develop telemedicine solutions for startups and others? Celadon will help you to introduce new benefits to healthcare! Our team applies advanced knowledge and skills combined with modern technology to create applications that change our world by making it easier and more technologically advanced.

If you have an idea, we have a solution for you! Fill out the form below to find out how we can help.