Medical App Development: Apps For Patients & Doctors
Over the past few years, the healthcare industry is growing at a tremendous rate. A vast number of small or big medical institutions across the globe are taking their services online through medical apps for the welfare of both the patients and the doctors.
Moreover, medical industry services are reached to a level where patients can access a wide number of services anywhere & anytime. Also, doctors can now constantly monitor patients’ health remotely and assist them.
Hence, if you also belong to the medical industry or want to join it, then you should consider medical app development to build an awesome medical app.
Here, in this blog, we will provide you with a complete guide on how to develop a medical app.
But, before that, it is highly essential to know the types of medical apps available in the market.
So, let’s go through them quickly.
Medical Apps for Patients
Numerous medical apps have been developed for the benefit of patients.
There is a growing popularity of the medical apps that allow for personal treatment of the patient by the provider. These apps help the patients in monitoring their health, managing their diet, treatment, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and tests.
Here are some of the common types of medical apps for patients:
Apps for chronic conditions:
These are healthcare apps for patients that are condition-specific like apps designed for people who have cancer, diabetes, allergies, cardiovascular diseases, post-operative care, etc.
Weight loss apps:
These apps are focused on weight tracking and calorie counting for people who want to lose weight.
Medication tracking app:
These apps help patients in keeping track of the medications that they need to take.
Pregnancy and childbirth apps:
These apps allow parents to keep track of the progress of the pregnancy and to track the development of the baby during each stage.
Apps to find doctors and schedule appointments:
These apps help the users to locate a doctor and schedule appointments online.
Apps for online consultations:
These are apps that help users to consult doctors online instead of going to a clinic.
Mental health Apps:
These apps help users to deal with stress relief and mental disorders like depression.
Clinical assistance apps:
These apps help users with information on HER, PHR, LIMS, HIMS, etc.
Medical Apps for Doctors
There are a wide number of medical apps already built for the advantage of doctors.
All these apps are built to speed up various tasks for doctors. This includes things like getting drug information, interacting with other specialists, etc.
Here are some of the common types of medical apps for doctors:
e-prescription app with access to information on medicines as well:
The e-prescription app helps the medical practitioner to issue a prescription and manage records of the patients.
Electronic Medical Record app:
This app helps the doctors to keep a record of the patients and keep track of the clinic schedules.
Nursing apps:
These apps help in scheduling patient visits, tracking, and storing medical records.
Chronic care management app for doctors:
This app helps in easy access to diagnostic and therapeutic tools with a possibility of remote monitoring of vitals of patients suffering from a chronic condition.
Apps that update doctors on the medical news and new drugs:
These apps give updated news on new medical research, diagnosis, new drugs, and techniques. This helps the doctors to keep abreast of the ever-changing and expanding medical field.
Apps that help primary health care providers:
These apps are for the primary health care providers and clinicians to identify the medical guidance required for a patient.
Apps on drug information:
These apps help the doctors to get information on existing drugs with details on components and side effects. It also helps with information on new medications on the market.
Interactive apps for doctors:
These apps are designed for doctors to communicate with their peers over a case or to refer to a current case and share details about it.
After going through different types of medical apps available in the market, we will walk you through the process of building a medical application.
Step by Step Process to Develop a Medical Application
Follow the process given below thoroughly for medical app development:
1. Conduct Market Research
The first and foremost thing you should do for developing a medical app is to carry out market research.
Here, you should check the best medical apps in the market. For this, you can install their apps and check what kind of features & functionalities they are providing, reviews & ratings from users, etc.
Apart from this, you should also go through the latest trends available in the online medical industry.
By carrying out these things, you will have a better understanding of popular medical apps in the market and also trends in the medical sector.
2. Choose the Type of Medical App
After thoroughly conducting the market research, the next essential step in medical app development is to choose the type of medical app you want to develop.
Here, you have two options, you can either choose any of the types of medical apps that we have discussed above, or you can develop a unique medical app as per your requirements and goals.
3. Choose Platform
In this stage, you have to decide on a platform. It means whether you want to build an Android or iOS app or both. You can choose the platform based on the presence of the target audience.
Here, if you are planning to develop an app on two platforms, then you can choose to create a cross-platform app.
By selecting this option, you can reduce app development costs and also release your app ahead of time.
4. Define Features & Functionalities
Now, you have to define all the features & functionalities that you want to integrate into your medical application. You will be able to list down all of these features considering your business requirements and what popular apps in the market are offering.
Examples of some of the features for different apps is as follows:
- A dashboard feature is crucial if you are developing a medical app for a clinic or hospital as it allows doctors to check multiple reports & other related things from one place.
- Real-time call/video communication is highly essential if you are going to build a telemedicine app.
To know more about features that you can integrate in your medical app, you can refer to these healthcare app development features.
5. Obtain necessary security licenses
In the current era of technology, the exchange and distribution of information are speedy, and therefore, it is essential to look after the security rules in medical app development.
A medical app will consist of data of patients and doctors, which is worth a lot. Moreover, the medical app is susceptible to various phishing attacks. Hence, medical app developers should be familiar with regulations set by the government and follow them while creating a medical app.
Here, laws & regulations are designed as per the location, and a developer needs to integrate security licenses based on the region. For instance, if you are building a medical app for Europe, then it should be GDPR compliant.
To follow all the rules appropriately, you should remember some of the things as follows:
- Think about the extent of your healthcare data & check if it transfers or saves any sensitive data.
- Ensure that the geographical security frameworks abide the global information security standards.
- Conduct a risk analysis of all the features and then execute things as per the app’s architecture.
6. Design your Medical App
The next step is to design your medical app. Here, your primary purpose need be to provide a highly-interactive user interface and flawless navigation. Apart from this, you need to create an app as per the latest app design trends.
Besides this, one of the primary questions that might seem in your mind is what is the cost of medical app design? Primarily, the cost of a medical app depends on various things such as app complexity, designing team, etc. To know more, refer this blog on app design cost.
7. Develop your Medical App
After designing your medical app correctly, the next important thing you should consider is developing your medical app.
However, before developing your medical app, one of the potent questions that may be thinking is medical app development cost.
To know cost of your medical app, refer to this guide on how much does it cost to develop an app.
8. Test & Launch
Now, you have to test your app effectively and resolve any of the errors. After your testing gets completed, your app is ready for launch & you can publish it in the relevant stores.
Conclusion
We hope that you have understood the process of medical app development. One of the essential things you should keep in mind is designing and developing your medical app according to the rules & regulations set by the government.
Secondly, you should build your medical app by focusing on the interests of your target audience. By this, you can develop a fully-functional medical app without much hindrance.
Lastly, if you have a unique medical app idea, then don’t hesitate to contact us. We at GuruTechnoLabs, a leading healthcare app development company, can provide you with the best medical app according to your required security standards.
You’re welcome to share your project details with us and we would provide you with a free quote.
