How Much Does It Cost to Make a Healthcare App Like ZocDoc

In the following sections, you will learn more about the factors that affect the cost to develop a healthcare app like ZocDoc and how to take them into account most effectively to ensure your app's success.

📊 Understanding the Cost Components of Building an App Like ZocDoc

The cost of building a medical appointment booking app like ZocDoc depends on a number of factors, which we will discuss below. This will help you understand how to finance such a project in the best possible way. Here is a detailed overview of the main cost components:

Software Licensing

Licensing forms the backbone of every healthcare application, especially if it is compliant with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPR, or HITECH. These licenses ensure that sensitive patient information is well protected.

Additionally, the inclusion of third-party APIs for telemedicine app development, payments, or geolocation will further increase the total cost of developing a medical app like ZocDoc.

This fee can range from $5,000 to $15,000 for the basic model, although prices will increase as additional services are added, such as artificial intelligence for analytics or data protection on the blockchain.

Implementation and Development Costs

Most of the investment is spent on the actual creation of the app. About the variability of your costs when creating an application like ZocDoc:

1. Features and complexity. Priorities, which include scheduling, patient profile, notifications, telemedicine, virtual visits and symptom checks, insurance verification, and payment.
2. Team composition. On average, a true development team should consist of UI/UX designers, front- and back-end developers, and quality assurance engineers. Depending on the region, the hourly rate can range from $40-$60 in Asia to $100-$200 in North America.
3. Cross-platform development. Developing for both Android and iOS increases costs but provides a wider reach. Using cross-platform frameworks such as Flutter or React Native can optimize costs.

Infrastructure Costs

Infrastructure costs, which include servers, databases, and cloud services, are integral to the overall cost to create an app like ZocDoc. A reliable and scalable backend ensures uninterrupted operation even during peak loads.

💡Reminder💡

Don't forget that you need a web version of your app as well. However, ZocDoc does not have a web version, so developing a desktop version can help capture a wider market share among users who prefer computers or those who want to use the features of an app like ZocDoc without even downloading it to their mobile phone.

Features and Functionality

The functionality of the application is the most important factor affecting the cost to develop a doctor appointment app like ZocDoc. Let's look at possible features for such an application using the example of ZocDoc:

UI / UX

UI/UX design is critical in ZocDoc clone app development. For such important health-related issues, users always expect to see a user-friendly and intuitive app. That's why there is always a special prototyping phase: to design the layouts of all screens and test the ease of navigation before developers start coding. This way, it eliminates rework and saves budget.

When working with the look and feel of the app, pay special attention to brevity and calm colors. The inclusion of animations, including sliding transitions between record forms, gives the impression of a modern application, but they should be used with caution, as their use should never compromise the functional integrity of the medical application.

Backend Development

Since medical applications include backend and databases, these components must be fine-tuned and optimized for performance when dealing with vast amounts of information. Patient data, physician schedules, and patient records are stored in the ZocDoc database for real-time updates. To achieve this level of performance, it is wise to utilize cloud-based solutions such as AWS or Google Cloud. These services are efficient as resources can be allocated based on traffic and also have a guaranteed storage solution.

Keep in mind that the application created cannot violate standards such as HIPAA or GDPR, which require data to be encrypted and locked down with multiple layers of authorization. For example, one of the constituent measures that ZocDoc applies is a two-factor authentication process for user accounts.

Third-Party Integrations

Using third-party services also entails additional costs. For example, ZocDoc covers telemedicine, allowing you to make video calls with doctors through the app. If you want to enable such a feature, you can simply use off-the-shelf APIs such as Twilio and Agora, where you don't need to code from scratch.

Payments can also be considered an important element of this list. Tools like Stripe and PayPal provide secure and convenient payment methods, allowing you to transfer funds instantly and efficiently.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Testing is considered one of the mandatory stages of creating medical applications for patients. Such applications deal with sensitive information, so in addition to the usual tests, it is important to test security for weaknesses, as well as load testing, as this platform should remain stable even with high traffic.

Both manual and automated tools are used to make testing more efficient. For example, when robotic automation is used, frequently used tests such as booking and canceling appointments can be easily performed.

Maintenance and Updates

Work on an application does not end after release. A focus on constant updating and adding new features increases competitiveness. For example, ZocDoc is constantly updating and improving the efficiency of its scheduling service and adding new options such as reminders, etc. The annual cost of maintaining the models built is typically around 33% of what was invested at the start. So, if you are planning to introduce features like chatbot with artificial intelligence or integration of wearable devices in the future, additional investments will also be required.

Validate Your Idea

You shouldn't immediately start building an app and spend significant development costs without testing your idea with your target market. Conduct surveys and create a prototype to start building user personas. You can find out user requirements and expectations before it's too late to redesign and pay for unused features.

This approach means that you are very selective about which functionalities to pay for, ensuring that only those that are most important to users are prioritized.

🤝 Why Choose Stormotion to Make a Healthcare App like ZocDoc

We at Stormotion have several successful projects in which we have developed fresh and inventive healthcare apps that meet today's consumer demands. Our experience in creating healthcare apps is evident in the Caspar Health and Life Bonus projects.

In this section, we would like to elaborate on our experience and approaches to developing and improving healthcare apps.

At Caspar Health, we have implemented specific scheduling and management solutions tailored to the requirements of therapists to show that we can develop clear and integrated appointment tools. These are basic application features required for successful patient-physician interactions, similar to those used in ZocDoc applications.

At LifeBonus, we have created an easy-to-use app for managing medical tasks and for caregivers of the elderly. This project demonstrates how to develop app interfaces that are user-friendly for all types of users, from working staff to elderly health care visitors.

In Caspar Health and LifeBonus, we utilized custom-designed APIs to work with patient information to ensure they were protected and updated in real time. Similarly, insurance verification, physician rating and telemedicine service like the one proposed by ZocDoc would be feasible components as we have extensive experience with them.

Both projects follow country-specific data security regulations and privacy requirements and international standards, including GDPR and HIPAA. Thus, we are confident that we can build a healthcare app similar to Zocdoc that is completely secure and in full compliance with the law when it comes to patient data.

Using frameworks such as React Native we have created iOS and Android versions of the app. This approach is paramount because an app like ZocDoc needs to provide security on as many platforms as possible without consuming an exorbitant amount of resources.