Telemedicine App Development: How to Make a Telehealth App or Site

Telemedicine is the solution to the problem. 89% of patients are willing to use telemedicine and accept it as a sufficient form of medical care. It shows us that telemedicine is not only needed but has a high demand.

The importance and benefits of telemedicine app development became especially clear during the COVID-pandemic. Many people would prefer to get medical care from their own homes and don’t unnecessarily risk their health. The same thing is true for healthcare professionals — they provide medical care remotely which mitigates the risk of getting a virus. Thus, telemedicine software makes it safer and more comfortable for both patients and doctors.

So now it’s easier than ever to develop a telemedicine platform and take off right from the start.

If you are interested in how to build a telemedicine app or website for doctors and patients but don’t know where to begin — we got you. Follow us to the next section!

✅ Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Develop a Telemedicine App

Before we get into details of telemedicine app development, why don’t we take a quick look at the benefits the telemedicine platform can bring you.

But firstly, we would recommend watching this video to better understand how important telemedicine apps are during COVID-pandemic:

Telemedicine apps are just the ticket for this purpose. It’s not only easy to collect health data but to transfer it to other doctors as long as it doesn’t break the Patient Privacy Policy.

By collecting medical data, you contribute to research, help develop new treatments, and know more about different diagnoses. Consequently, you improve doctors’ knowledge and skills — the payment increases and the credibility becomes better.

Most importantly, you improve the quality of telehealth services you provide via the platform since it’s easier to access and store data.

Cut costs ❎

This is a clear advantage — online platforms, whether in telemedicine or meditation app development, tend to be cost-effective in the long run.

Of course, it doesn’t replace an offline hospital — many issues can’t be treated online. However, it significantly reduces costs and allows healthcare organizations to provide some primary care via a web or mobile app.

What is more, there will be less paperwork — almost everything can be digitalized and done in a telehealth app. It will not only cut costs by reducing paper use for documentation, doctor-patient agreements, and prescriptions but allow you to focus on actual tasks and profit increase as well.

⚙️ Top Features of a Telemedicine Platform

In this section, we will explore the basic and special features of telemedicine platforms, a crucial aspect of medical app development. It will help you to get a better vision of what app features you may need for telemedicine app development.

You should take into account that telemedicine apps can be web- or mobile-based. All features listed can be adapted for both types of platforms so we decided not to separate them.

Though, we divided features into two different types: common, and features for doctors and patients separately.

Here are the features to make your telemedicine software viable and stay ahead of the competition.

# 1: Sign Up & Profiles 🔐

Type: Common Feature

This feature is something that almost every web or mobile app has. However, to build a telemedicine platform for doctors you need to consider a few details.

First, you need to divide your Sign Up into two categories: for doctors and patients.

# 13: Push-Notifications 🔔

Type: Common Feature

Push-notifications can be useful for everybody: business owners, doctors, and patients.

Business owners can increase revenue by sending personalized offers.

Doctors can get new messages from patients, notifications, reminders about appointments (this one should be able to be customized. “Remind N min before the appointment”, etc.).

Patients can get reminders for appointments as well. Besides, it’s not excessive to offer reminders for taking pills, test results, and so on. Thus, users will use your telemedicine application more often.

🔐 How to Ensure Security in Your Telemedicine App

We know how important it is to trust your doctor — everybody feels the need for his information to be secure and stay private. Thus, it's often an important part of telehealth app development.

On a telemedicine platform, to make your users’ personal information and business data completely secure you should follow the following steps.

Security Measures You Can Implement during Telemedicine App Development 🔑

# 1: Data Encryption

Nowadays frauds and hackers can use stolen data for blackmailing, manipulations, reselling, and many other harmful things for both businesses and users. We bet you don't want it for your telemedicine mobile or web app.

One of the best things you can do to prevent data leakage is encryption for transmitting and storing.

When developing a telemedicine app, take into account that a big part of doctors’ appointments will be done via video calls it’s of high importance to pay attention to encryption at this stage.

🚀 Tech Stack for Telemedicine Software Development

To make your app more convenient to use you could implement different APIs and SDKs for telemedicine app. Here is the list:

• Symptom Checker API is indented to provide help in identifying what diseases a patient might have. Based on this info, your app with the implemented API will determine the most appropriate doctors for further consultations.
• SimplyBook.me API implements an automated appointment scheduler.
• BetterDoctor API can be used to add doctor data into the healthcare project.
• To provide your users with a fully flexible communication cloud platform consider implementing Vonage API.
• For managing payments, we would recommend implementing Stripe and Braintree SDKs since they’re secure and fast. The necessary technology for telemedicine app development.

💰 How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Telemedicine Platform?

In this section, we’ll provide you with a rough estimate of telemedicine app development costs.

By rough we mean that they may differ depending on your platform’s structure, various technologies, and integrations.

Our estimations use an average rate for Eastern Europe of $45/hour, however, your development team can take more or less which surely changes the estimate.

Thus, the rough cost to develop a telemedicine app is between $24,000-$36,000. Don’t forget, it’s a rough estimate.

The number of features, needed technologies & integrations, as well as an hourly rate of your development team for telemedicine app development services, will likely change your expenditures.

💡 Takeaways

Now you fully understand what main steps you should take to develop a web-based telemedicine system or mobile telehealth application and how you can benefit from it.

It’s hard not to see how life-saving telemedicine web and mobile apps are. Thus, telemedicine app development is not only socially important but also quite beneficial from the business perspective.

To sum up, to develop a telemedicine platform you should:

• Decide on whether it should be web- or mobile-based.
• Choose the features you want to see on your platform.
• Check all security regulations your platform has to comply with.
• Find a Tech Partner and start your development journey.

Have any questions on telemedicine app development? Don’t hesitate to drop us a line! Or you can tell us about your idea and we’ll see how we can help!