How to Develop a Telemedicine App in 2020 and Don’t Drop the Ball?

Author: Maksym Babych

In the past few years, the telemedicine industry has brought a new revolution in the healthcare sector. The availability of telemedicine apps like PlushCare or MDLIVE makes medical services accessible to people.

The rapid growth in the number of people using these telemedicine apps have widened up the market for such apps. It is a prime reason that many technology companies are now considering the need for telemedicine app development.

What Are Telemedicine Apps Benefits?

There are a plethora of benefits for using and developing software for Healthcare. Especially telemedicine apps both for doctors and patients. Some of the benefits are as below:

For Patients

  • Faster Solutions

  • More Convenient

  • Easy Access to Specialists

  • Better Satisfaction

For Doctors

  • Efficient Monitoring System

  • Extensive Patient Reach

  • Better Practice Efficiency

  • Time-Saving

All these features are a must for developing a telemedicine app, hence pay attention to these points while research how to make such kind of software. They provide the best UX and technical solutions to improve the value offer of a product.

Challenges in Telehealth App Development

Telemedicine app development is not a cakewalk and demands high expertise and plenty of time to get it done. The efficient development process always makes your own telemedicine app stay one step ahead of others. Some of the biggest challenges are as follows:

1. Implementation of UI/UX

Implementing the UI/UX requires creating an innovative app that can work well on all different platforms. The biggest challenge that telemedicine app developers face is to create an interface that meets the demand of all the sets of users.\

2. Backend Integration

Backend Integration ensures quick and successful data transfer from the patient’s end to the doctor’s end. Though the implementation of this process is a lot more challenging. Telemedicine app development requires the integration of many features in the app that must be HIPPA compliant.

3. Scalability

An excellent telemedicine app development solution requires many features for its successful implementation. One challenge that most telemedicine app developers ignore is the scalability of the application.

4. Compliance with Healthcare Authorities

One of the biggest challenges to develop a telemedicine app is making it compliant to HIPAA and GDPR.

There is a set of standards set by the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) to consider while making the app. These protocols aim at the protection of the medical records of a patient.

5. Data Security

The security of the data is important. Most software stores their data and access it from the cloud servers. If the backend infrastructure is weak and lacks security, it won’t take much time for hackers to breach the data. And that’s the main reason why coders pay so much attention to database design during telemedicine app creation.

How Telemedicine Apps Make Money?

There are several models that are required for how to develop a telemedicine app in order to generate revenue from the usage.

These models need to be thoroughly planned and strategized by the telemedicine app developers before they go ahead with the development process.

The basic way through which these apps earn a profit is through the fees. For instance, Doctor on Demand charges a fee of 25% from the patient for every successful appointment they make with the doctor.

The scalable business model is crucial for your product growth. Yet, the developers also should know what is your plan of monetization for a better technical design of your telemedicine app.

It is estimated that Doctor on Demand made a revenue of 12 million dollars in the previous year.

So to understand how to develop a telemedicine app and make money through it, let’s go ahead and study the models in detail.

  • Subscription Model

One of the basic ways through which telemedicine apps make money is through the monthly or annual payment plans

  • Advertisement Model

In-app advertisements are the best way to generate high profits from your application.

  • Reference Model

Another way to earn money for the telemedicine apps is through references.

  • Franchising Model

The sole purpose of building a telehealth app is that you can get medical services without physically going to the hospital.

Also, in our article we’ve included paragraph about How to Develop a Telemedicine App?

Cost of Telemedicine MVP Development

The cost of building a telemedicine app majorly depends upon the features that you need to insert in the app. The features determine the time taken for the app to build.

Also, it depends on the region from where you are hiring the developers. Developers from the US region usually have more hourly rates. The telemedicine app developers that are based in Ukraine, India, or the Philippines have much lower hourly rates.

To calculate the development cost of the telemedicine app, there is a basic formula: Time Taken for the App Development x Hourly Rate of the Developer.

Hourly Price of the Developers

A developer who is based in the US region takes anywhere between $150 – $250 per hour for the telemedicine app development.

Telemedicine app developers from the UK region have an average rate of $70 – $150 per hour.

A developer from Ukraine has an average rate of $30 – $50 per hour.

Developers based in the Indian subcontinent take an average hourly rate of $22 – 40. Yet, the quality of the code may be poor.

Let’s take Ukrainian development cost as a base for calculations.

So to build an MVP of the telemedicine app, it will take around 3 months and an average amount of $40,000 – $50,000. On the addition of more sophisticated features and the complete development of the app, it may take 6-9 months.

The overall cost for telehealth app development will start at $80 000.

SpdLoad Expertise in Building Telehealth Applications

Here, at SpdLoad, we focus on delivering the best quality products for Healthcare startups. We have a deep expertise in building HIPAA compliance applications. We know the following challenges and know how to beat them in an efficient way.

Let’s take a look at our case on developing the telemedicine app from scratch. The team composition includes:

  • 1 Business Analyst

  • 1 UX/UI designer

  • 1 Backend developer

  • 1 Frontend developer

  • 1 Mobile developer

  • 1 QA tester

  • 1 Project Manager

And here is how we did it:

  • The customer came to us without specific requirements. The task was to build a market-driven telemedicine application.

  • The main challenge was to identify the target audience, find relevant pain points, and offer a valuable solution. Thus, we start the development:

    • We start with an in-depth market analysis. We generated a set of hypotheses to check-in 3 fields: what pains are we gonna solve? Why would customers use our application instead of current solutions? How to make our offer better than existing?

    • Afterward, we continue to work with design researches. It helped us to create customer personas and user journey maps. It was a start point to clearly offer the core values of our product.

    • As a result of customer development, we created a customer and market-driven set of requirements to start an MVP development.

  • The main technical challenge was to make the application HIPAA compliant. Yet, our expertise helped us to manage that part in 100 development hours.

Telemedicine app development is definitely not an easy project as it sounds, but the returns can be rewarding. The market trends show that the need for telemedicine apps is huge in the global market. So if you are willing to develop such an app, it is important to do thorough research first.

This article will cover several benefits, costs, procedures, and how to develop a telemedicine app: https://spdload.com/blog/telemedicine-app-development/