Creating a Healthcare Mobile App: Its Trends, Features and Development Costs in 2021

Undoubtedly, mobile applications have revolutionized the way people manage and access their things and add a layer of the supreme level of comfort to our lives.

Did you know 448 million users all over the world use smartphones for browsing the internet and out of which 52% of smartphone users gather health-related information on their phones?

That information may include any healthcare topic, medical procedure, or fitness-related information. In fact, the size of the mobile healthcare market was estimated to be $106 billion in 2019 and expected to grow to $640 billion by 2026 at 28.5% CAGR.

With these figures, it is crystal clear that the mobile healthcare market is steadily paving its way towards technology and transforming the way people avail medical care.

If you are also interested in building an application for healthcare and want to be a part of a thriving industry by leveraging technological innovations then your intentions are bang on!

This is an alerting time for medical service providers to think of healthcare mobile app development solutions to keep their foothold strong for the next decades.

The need for healthcare automation and digitization has been urgent in the market especially after the Covid-19 Outbreak. The wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that the global medical industry has to make some serious adjustments in order to cope up with the new realities.

While there are more than 400,000 healthcare applications in the app store, only a few have succeeded in the market. So the first thing to focus on is having million-dollar app development ideas for your healthcare business.

1. Healthcare App Development Ideas for Startups To Generate Better Revenues

When it comes to developing a healthcare mobile application, it makes sense to divide it into two segments: professional apps and healthcare apps for patients. So let’s discuss the healthcare mobile app development Ideas that enable you to meet the end-users needs. 

Professional Healthcare App Development Trends

• Doctor Appointment and Consulting App
• Doctor On-demand App
• Patient Medical Health Tracking App
• Medical Reference and Database App
• Clinic Management App
• Telemedicine Price Comparison and Ordering App
• Appointment Management App 
• Medical Training and Virtual Surgery Assistance App

The rough estimation of transforming any of these app development ideas into a final product may vary between $40,000 to $50,000+ if you choose to  hire mobile app developer with an hourly rate of $25+.

Healthcare Mobile Apps For Patients

• Health and Fitness tracking app
• Diet and Calories tracking app
• Women’s health tracking app
• Mental health app
• Anxiety and mental disorder app
• Healthcare tracking and monitoring app
• Monitoring apps for tracking chronic conditions
• Healthy Lifestyle apps
• Weight loss and fitness management app

Healthcare mobile apps like HeyDoc, MyMedicNow or Health on Hand are trending Worldwide and contributed $1.23 billion in 2019 and expected to generate $5.78 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 36.18% during 2019-24. And the Middle-East healthcare service market in Gulf regions are greatly relied upon to observe noteworthy development done with the help of mobile app development company.

2. What Are The Most Common Trends To Consider In The Healthcare Industry?

With the availability of millions of applications in the healthcare industry, developing another ordinary application with just a browsing and booking button will not provide a satisfying experience to the customers. To stay ahead in the competition, you need to hire a mobile app development company that can help you integrate such innovative technologies and trends in the app development solution.

So here are the few innovative trends and solutions that can help you make swiftly capture this growing market:

Telemedicine and Telehealth

In the wake of Covid-19, Telemedicine and telehealth market has come out as the fastest-growing segments in healthcare and estimated to grow at a CAGR of 37.7% during the forecast period. It is projected that the telemedicine and telehealth industry will reach $191.7 billion by 2025 from $38 billion in 2020.

The growth in this sector is mainly driven by factors such as the increasing demand of the population, the need to expand healthcare access, a shortage of physicians, advancements in telecommunications, increasing awareness and more.

Internet of Things For Wearable Devices

The more people are becoming health conscious, the better they are keeping track of their health with wearable devices. And the biggest example is Fitbit, with its impressive line of smartwatches and wireless-enabled wearable devices- users can easily measure their personal health growth. And the one standalone technology that allows wearable devices to measure personal metrics is the “Internet of Things”. And with the projection that 439 million devices will be connected to wearable devices in North America in 2022, it is worth hiring a mobile app development company that can help you deliver the IoT integrated application.

Cloud-Based Solutions

Now you can allow users to access their medical records including bills, insurance plans, medical history, easily with the integration of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) in Cloud-Based Healthcare solutions. With the integration of the cloud-based solution, healthcare apps become more accessible and ensure better data security at a lower cost.

Artificial Intelligence and Analytics

The technologies like chatbots, robots, big data analytics can be deployed to help gather information, reassure the population, treat patients, and make diagnoses far easier than ever before. Where physicians patients often face a lack of familiarity with new practices and do not readily give up an existing traditional practice, at the same time the potential of analytics, AI and machine learning are paving the new advanced ways in the field of healthcare.

Do you think that these few trends will help your app stand out in the competition? So what’s the simple mantra of making a successful healthcare app?

While developing an on-demand healthcare application, its features and functionalities can make a huge difference in its success. So let’s talk about the essential features that you need to include in the healthcare application.

3. Essential Feature and Functionalities to Integrate into Healthcare Application

Healthcare mobile app development is majorly depending upon the features that will go into your solution. While the set of features you choose for the app development directly impacts the UI and UX design services, back-end development, app testing and maintenance. But it’s only these features that serve the concept and solution to the users.

So let’s now check the essential features that you should consider including in the healthcare application:

• User Profile
  As like other mobile apps, healthcare apps also have a user profile. Once you create the profile, patients can add their personal information such as name, age, chronic disease, insurance and more. The registered users can also store their health data in the app and include a personalized dashboard. 
• Healthcare Monitoring
  This is an important feature within a healthcare mobile app as it enables you to keep track of a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, calorie consumption, glucose level and more. All thanks to the integration of IoT with wearable devices, that make it possible for an app to track everything and measure personal metrics.
• Appointment Scheduling
  This feature allows users to book an appointment with their choice of doctor by checking their availability on the specific date or day. Also, it is possible to schedule a drug prescription, sleeping times, water consumption or workout time with this feature. From the physician’s perspective to managing the user’s personal healthcare goals, this feature can be customized as per their needs.  
• Search and Filters
  Right from finding the doctors for a particular disease or specialization (Orthopaedics, Gynaecologist, Dermatologist and more), users can use the search box or filters to easily get what they are looking for in the app. 
• Telemedicine
  This feature will allow a medical professional to monitor and provide the prescription to the patients without any need of visiting the clinic. 
• Virtual Health Record
  Make sure you have a feature in your app that keeps a track record of a patient’s medical history and cloud-based solutions to make it easier to access. 
• Managing Appointments
  To ensure a hassle-free appointment booking experience, make sure you have a super admin layer in your app that manages appointments for both patients and doctors. 
• Dashboard for Patients
  This feature allows you to check the patient’s previous medical history, including any medications, diagnosis history, vitals, nutritional values, treatments and more. 
• Geolocation
  This is another important feature to be considered for the project as it helps users to find a doctor’s help in a nearby location without any delay. 
• Real-Time Chat
  In the wake of AI, make sure your app is integrated with the chatbot that provides 24*7 assistance and able to connect the patient with the right doctor for a fruitful consultation. This feature will help you build trustworthy relations between patients and healthcare service providers. 
• Video Conferencing
  You can take your communication process to the next level by simply adding this feature and providing provision to virtually get connected with the doctor to avail medical assistance. 
• Social Integration
  Allow users to the sign-in app through any social media account including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more.
• Ratings and Review
  Allow users to share their experience with the doctor or how far they are satisfied with their services. This will further boost the engagement of the user and build loyal relationships with the customer.

The average cost to develop a healthcare mobile application with this set of features will cost you approx $15,000 to $17,000+ depending upon the team of developers you choose to hire for the project.

4. How To monetize Your HealthCare Application?

Hiring the best mobile app development company in Dubai, choosing the best methodology of app development, integrating the excellent set of features, and more are at one side. How to make a profit from your healthcare app model is another major concern for businesses.

The majority of the healthcare apps available on Google Play or App Store that too free of charge. But here are the few proven apps monetizing strategies that healthcare experts can consider in 2021:

• Third-party advertisements or promotions of other brands in your app.
• Selling monthly subscription plans with additional features or offers.
• In-App purchase model to earn a fixed percentage of commission on every sale.

5. How Much Does It Cost To Launch a Healthcare Mobile App in 2021?

The cost to build MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for a healthcare application starts from $30,000 per platform (iOS or Android Web). The final estimation of the project can reach $50,000+ or beyond that.

Estimating the final cost of the project is always a daunting task for the developers as there are a number of factors contributing to the project’s budget. The major app development cost influencing factors are:

• The pre-development stage of the app development includes market research, analysis, identifying the app idea scope, implementation of the app and more.
• A number of operating platforms that you are planning to target. (Android, iOS or Both).
• Technologies, tools or frameworks that you integrate into the development process. In the case of considering AI, Machine Learning or Big Data Analytics, you need to have big budget brackets. 
• The complexity of the app design includes animations, customizations, API integrations, branding, and more. 
• Hiring the app development company in Dubai. And to develop a healthcare mobile app, you basically need a team of business analyst, Backend-developer, frontend developer, UX/UI designer and quality assurance engineer. 

Here’s the infographic estimation for the quick view:

Note: These are the rough estimations based on market surveys and reports. For exact time and cost projections, it is worth discussing the project details with the experts.

Conclusion: Ready To Hire a Mobile App Development Team?

Whether you are a startup or a leading healthcare service provider, if you are going to develop a healthcare mobile app, firstly you need to understand the need of end-users as it directly impacts the number of features, regulations, development cost and app structure.

With millions of healthcare applications already available in the app store, it becomes tough to stand among the competitors with an ordinary app structure. So to avoid such errors and add a cutting-edge to your app, it is worth hiring mobile app developers experienced with healthcare mobile app development solutions.

They will analyse your business idea, evaluate it with the market trends, suggest the best-suited technology and empowers you with a robust, scalable and flexible healthcare solution that enables you to quench the needs of end-users.