How to Make a Medical App – Practical To-Do Guide for 2023

If you’re an entrepreneur or a startup looking to create a health app, then this is the ultimate guide for you. Here, ProCoders cover everything you need to know about how to create a health app.

We’ll start with a look at the different types of apps that are out there, and we also look at some of the most interesting and innovative health apps currently available. We end by analyzing the development process for building a health app, taking lessons from ProCoder’s own experience to explain how to create a health app that is functional.

Healthcare Apps Market Overview

A year ago the University of Michigan published a report about medical apps. It revealed that there are more than 350,000 mobile health apps already on the market. 

You might think that it’s more common among young people to use apps to manage their personal health, but the numbers say otherwise. Nearly three in ten adults aged 50–80 (28%) said they currently use at least one mobile health app, and 16% reported that they used them in the past but not currently. 

People don’t necessarily use health-related applications because they have a condition; they may not. The most common reason why a company might make a healthcare app is lifestyle and activity tracking. 34% of older adults said they use or have used apps for exercise, 22% for nutrition, 20% for weight loss, and 17% for sleep. So keep that in mind if you want to create a healthcare app.

The growing trend of digitalization in the health system can be observed in various countries around the world including India, Italy, Indonesia, China, etc. Your company can take part in this growth too. You just need to make a healthcare app that caters to the important needs of users. We’ll explain how to design and develop a mobile health application further.

But before diving into more details about how to develop a healthcare app, let’s take a look at the different types of medical applications.

Types of Medical Applications

Gaining insight into how to create a health app requires learning from examples of the most established ones and what features make them stand out.

Lifestyle Tracking Apps

These apps are designed to analyze patient health and fitness by tracking important metrics such as heart rate, sleep, physical exercise, calorie intake, and other activities such as women’s menstrual cycles. These include Google Fit, Sleep as Android, Map My Fitness, etc.

Some apps may also offer tailored services for special conditions such as pregnant women, to track fetal development (you may be interested in how to create female health tracking app). Other apps can provide their users with a full diet plan based on their health conditions and needs (we consider how to make a nutrition app in our blog as well).

Fitness Apps

Fitness apps offer general and personalized coaching and guidance for people who want to be more physically active. Some apps also offer customized workout sessions, especially for people who don’t have access to gym equipment. Yoga apps also fall in this category (you can read how to make a yoga app in our blog as well). Some popular fitness apps include Sworkit, Nike Training Club, etc.

Health Counselling Apps

Some apps allow you to book counseling sessions via chat or video call with medical practitioners including doctors, therapists, and specialists. These apps, such as MDLIVE, Doctor on Demand, Talkspaceare are great for non-emergency issues and diagnoses when you don’t have immediate access to a physician.

Meditation Apps

These apps provide guided meditations, mindfulness exercises, and other tools to help users improve their overall well-being. Some popular meditation apps include Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer. How to make a meditation app? Start a Discovery Phase with ProCoders and get a full development plan for your app!

Top 10 Most Popular Healthcare Applications

Nike Training Club

This app was introduced over a decade ago. However, it shot into mainstream popularity as a home workout app in the wake of COVID-19, as many people were under lockdown needed to stay fit even without professional equipment.

Daily Yoga

It features meditation, physical poses and stretches, and deep breathing for physical and mental development. Daily Yoga has over 50 million users globally and it features several yoga classes for beginners and expert yogis alike.

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is best described as a nutrition-tracking app. Users can search through its catalog of foods to find nutrition information including calorie count and serving size of various foods. You may use this platform as a template guide for how to make a medical app.

Fitbit

The app connects to physical trackers and smartwatches that measure a user’s heart rate, workout, sleep, nutrition, and other activity.

Headspace

It aims to help users meditate better and sleep more restfully. It relies on clinical research to draw up intuitively guided mindfulness meditation plans for users.

Doctor on Demand

Through virtual counseling, doctors and counselors on the platform facilitate the treatment of cold and flu, mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, eye issues, allergies, and so on.

Medscape

It is a unique medical app for physicians, medical practitioners, and other healthcare professionals that help them to discharge their services better to patients. The app contains the latest medical news from various fields and specialties, drug and disease information, medical reference and answers, and so on.

Ovia Health

It features a pregnancy tracker app, a fertility app that tracks menstrual cycle and ovulation, a parenting app that tracks breastfeeding and baby health, and other family health offerings. This can really give insight into how to make a medical app that is family-focused.

Medisafe

Medisafe is known for its pill reminder and medication tracker app, which helps people who are on drugs to take charge of their health.

WebMD

The WebMD telemedicine app helps users to check their symptoms, remember to take their medicine, find doctors and specialists around them and make appointments, and find information about various medical conditions. It also helps users to save money by finding lower prescription drug prices.

Must-Have Features of a Successful Health App

Depending on the purpose and application, building a health app may require several features even up to live video conferencing. However, some of these app features are must-haves in determining how to create a health app, whether you are making an android or ios medical app.

User Profile

It should be able to set up and manage their health profile, including controlling data and information that the app can access. To make a medical application more personalized, most creators collect basic information such as name, contact information, age, height, weight, and the likes at sign-up.

Dashboard

Make a healthcare app without a dashboard that provides patient monitoring and you would leave users confused. The dashboard gives users an overview of their health records and serves as a visual health record and activity summaries for the most essential health metrics to users.

Chat and Messaging

Medical mobile apps that require communication between doctors and patients need chat and messaging features for obvious reasons. Other kinds of mobile medical apps can integrate this feature to help users interact with other members of various support groups in order to motivate each other towards achieving their health goals. A chatbot is an amazing tool to use in both cases. In our blog, you can find out about chatbot building price and other details.

Notification and Reminders

Always remember when you create a healthcare app that such programs are not passive; they are interactive. That is, they require users to take specific kinds of actions based on app suggestions. It’s also important to consider during fitness tracker app development. App reminders can be helpful to keep users conscious of their health and fitness requirements from the app.

Cloud Integration

Patient data should always be accessible to each user. Cloud integration enables users to access their data at any time and transfer their health records as required, for instance, when a healthcare provider requires it.

Security and privacy

Because health mobile apps collect very sensitive and confidential information, developers building a health app should have privacy and security in mind at all times. This includes data encryption, multifactor authentication, and so on.

Secure Payment Processing

Unless your app is completely free, you need a secure payment processing feature that does not expose sensitive customer data. Payment processing should also be smooth, seamless, and fast for a greater user experience.

Analytics Integration

This is important so you can gather enough data to help your app work better. Always ask users for permission before you collect or share any part of their data. Every health app, including Samsung Health, iOS Health, Google Fit, etc. collects and integrates personalised data.

Other features that are not must-haves but may be nevertheless necessary, depending on how to create a medical app as you plan include:

• Wearable device integration
• Goal setting
• Social sharing integration
• Gamification
• Video tutorials
• Appointment management et cetera.

Challenges You May Face If You Create a Medical Application

How to make a medical app is never a straightforward process. You will definitely encounter challenges. This section lists some of those challenges as well as steps to overcome them.

Compliance and HIPAA Requirements

One of the biggest challenge in healthcare app development you may face is ensuring compliance with various regulations and requirements, such as those outlined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States. HIPAA sets strict standards for the protection of patients’ sensitive health information, including their medical records and personal data. 

If you want to make a medical application, to comply with these requirements you will need to implement robust security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to safeguard this information from unauthorized access or disclosure. Additionally, you may need to work with legal and compliance experts to ensure that your application meets all relevant regulations and guidelines. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in severe penalties and legal consequences, making it crucial to prioritize compliance as a key aspect of your mobile medical app development process.

Scalability

A healthcare app collects data, a lot of it; when this data becomes too much on non-scalable apps, the systems fail. This might even lead to security issues. Scalability is essential in how to develop a healthcare app.

Many popular apps use artificial intelligence and machine to offer personalized services to several users. Samsung Health, MyFitnessPal, Google Fit, etc. all have several users and are still able to provide scalable solutions to everyone.

IoT Integration

Most health mobile applications today are used in conjunction with mobile devices, wrist bands, and smartwatches that function as activity trackers and process medical records in real-time. In short, mobile health apps function within a current ecosystem. Therefore, the apps like Fitbit need to operate seamlessly with these bands and watches.

Accessibility and User Experience

Many health apps focus on functionality only, often to the detriment of user experience. However, the best apps are so easy to use that they feel seamless to users. Apps such as Fabulous and Headspace are popular because they are intuitive to use, employing gamification to sustain the interest of users.

Market Trends

Regarding how to develop a medical app, the health industry has been subject to rapidly developing innovations, especially in the wake of the latest wave of technological advancements. Therefore, health app developers need to figure out how to acknowledge the latest trends in building their apps. Some of the current trending technologies in how to build a medical app include AI and machine learning, IoT, blockchain, 5G, and so on.

Monetization Models: How do Health Apps Make Money?

If you’re an investor looking for a promising new market to tap into, mobile medical application development might be just the opportunity you’ve been searching for, as the demand for digital health solutions continues to soar. But how do these apps make money, and what are the most promising monetization models for investors to consider?

Paid Apps

The most straightforward monetization model is to charge users a one-time fee to download the app. This model can work well for apps that offer a unique or specialized service, such as a fitness tracker or a symptom checker.

Examples:

• MyFitnessPal
• Headspace

Freemium Model

In this model, the app is free to download and use, but certain features or content are locked behind a paywall. This way, health apps can provide a low barrier to entry while still generating revenue from users who are willing to pay for added value. This work particularly well for apps that offer a wide range of features and services, as it allows users to try the app out before committing to a purchase.

Examples:

• Fitbit
• Strava

Subscription Model 

By charging users a recurring fee to access premium content or features, health apps can generate a reliable stream of revenue that can quickly add up over time. This can work well for apps that offer ongoing services, whether it’s a fitness app that offers personalized workout plans or a nutrition app that provides customized meal plans.

Examples:

• Peloton Digital
• Noom

Advertising

Some health apps generate revenue through in-app advertising. This can include banner ads, sponsored content, or personalized product recommendations. Tip from ProCoders – during healthcare mobile application development and maintenance, make sure that your users are not too annoyed by your advertising. it is a common problem nowadays, and one of the significant reasons why people stop using certain apps.  

Examples:

• WebMD
• Healthline

Partnerships

Partnerships with healthcare providers or insurance companies to offer services and products to users and receive a commission or fee for resulting sales or sign-ups can be a lucrative monetization model for health apps. By partnering with organizations that are invested in improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs, health apps can provide value to their users while also generating revenue through commission or referral fees. Moreover, your partner can be also your investor in mobile health application development!

Examples:

• Doctor on Demand
• GoodRx

The 5 Steps How to Make a Medical App

This details some necessary steps to be taken to build healthcare applications.

Step 1. Identify the Target Audience and Their Needs

This is the essential stage in how to build a medical app. The mobile healthcare app industry is already saturated as is. So before you start to create a healthcare, you should carry out intense research to know your customers to identify the problems your app must solve.

For instance, Ovia Health targets families and women; Daily Yoga targets yogis and yoga enthusiasts; Nike Training Club targets pro and amateur athletes. The needs of your audience will determine the features to be introduced in building your own app.

Step 2. Pre-Development

After that, you have to make a plan on how to develop a medical app. Determine appropriate specifications and requirements for building the app in terms of functionalities, cost, resources, and personnel (consider checking our article about how much does it cost to create a fitness app to learn more on this subject).

This is the stage to determine what kinds of professionals you will need, the tools and technologies required, the technological stack for development, (government) certification requirements, the cost of development (budget), and so on.

Tip from ProCoders: while forming a technology stack, consider the following frameworks:

• Frontend: Angular, Vue, and React; 
• Backend: Node.js, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails; 

Mobile app development: React Native, Ionic, and Flutter etc.

Step 3. Development

The aim here is to build an MVP from scratch and then continually test and iterate to add more and more functions. The project plan from the pre-development stage should be the main guide throughout the development process when one build healthcare applications.

But before that, you have 2 options: hire mobile app developers team in-house, or work with an offshore development team.

At ProCoders, we build development teams for clients from our own pool of developers and engineers, all of them already proven their experience during our hiring process. We can help you cut recruitment and hiring time and costs, which will reduce the time-to-market and ensures efficient development from a cohesive team.

Step 4. Quality Assurance

Don’t underestimate this stage. It you want to build healthcare app, which is reliable and secure, you have to use professional QA engineers. That doesn’t matter how much testing and debugging developers perform, they should still rely on quality assurance testing to eliminate blind spots.

Step 5. Product Release and Continuous Support

Once the app is deployed, it would still require continuous support. Many companies determine at this stage to let off their external development team and let the in-house team handle the rest. This may include continuous iteration of the app to ensure full stability, initially.

How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Healthcare App?

It is impossible to give a definite cost or even draw up an estimate right here because there are different approaches to build healthcare applications. More so, in how to develop a medical app, each app prioritizes various features and so definitely, the requirements would be different.

A simple healthcare app with basic features may cost up to $80,000, although the average cost is often much lower. For complex apps with several advanced features, the cost for a full app can go as high as $120,000 and that only counts the development phase. MVP apps are usually cheaper because of the optimised development process and can cost as little as $25,000. 

However, you can find below a table of important roles to build healthcare app as well as their average monthly rates in different countries:

Role	Average Monthly Rate in US	Average Monthly Rate in UK	Average Monthly Rate in Albania	Average Monthly Rate in Portugal
Cross-platform mobile developer	$7000	$6500	$3000	$4000
Backend developer	$8000	$7800	$3500	$4600
Frontend developer	$7500	$6900	$3200	$4100
QA Tester	$5500	$4900	$2900	$3500
UI/UX Designer	$5000	$4500	$2500	$3000
Project Manager	$6000	$5000	$3600	$4200

Hidden Costs

When it comes to healthcare application development, there are often hidden costs that can quickly add up. These might include legal fees for compliance and regulatory requirements, ongoing maintenance and updates, and unexpected development costs. Not to mention marketing, PR releases, app store optimization expenses, and so on. All these should be finalized during the planning budget stage of healthcare mobile app development.

Saving Tips

While there are many costs associated with mobile health app development, there are also a number of strategies for saving money and optimizing your development process. 

• Work with a development partner who has experience in app development for healthcare (such as ProCoders) and can offer guidance on the most efficient and cost-effective development strategies.
• Use open-source technologies and pre-built components to help reduce development costs and speed up time to market.
• Prioritize the features that will provide the most value to users and focus on developing those first. Test and iterate as you go, rather than trying to build the entire app at once. This can help to catch issues early on and prevent costly rework later on in the development process.
• Prioritize security and compliance from the beginning to avoid costly legal issues or security breaches down the line. 
• Use offshoring benefits. This may help you save time and money by hiring experienced, yet more affordable developers in regions like central Europe.

Low-Cost Development Traps: Reveal and Avoid

While it’s certainly possible to start a medical app on a tight budget, there are a number of potential pitfalls that can lead to low-quality apps. These might include relying on inexperienced or low-cost developers, skimping on security measures or compliance requirements, or neglecting critical features or functionality. To avoid this, it’s important to prioritize quality and reliability when creating a development plan for the healthcare application platform. A reputable development partner with experience in the healthcare industry can help to ensure that your app meets all relevant standards and provides a high-quality user experience. 

You can contact ProCoders to start a Discovery Phase, during which we conduct extensive research into every aspect of your project, including its structure and overall strategy. We also estimate the scope of work by selecting suitable technologies for features and scalability, and evaluate the difficulty of the tasks to determine the engineering skill level needed to do the job right. ProCoders then organizes and prioritizes tasks, creates a queue of iterations, and plans project development on both the business and engineering sides. As a result, you’ll have a clear and detailed roadmap.

Our Experience in Building a Health Application

At ProCoders we know exactly how to design and develop a mobile health application. We have worked with clients around the world and created a welfare app, fitness app, and Capital Cycle Management (CCM) system. Let’s take a closer look at the stories of our success:

Fitness app Dryft

We know how to create a fitness app because one of our most successful projects was Dryft, in the USA. Dryft is a cross-platform app that allows users to book and attend fitness classes in interesting and convenient locations. ProCoders worked closely with the client to develop a comprehensive app that was easy to use, engaging, and effective. Our team of skillful developers and designers utilized cross-platform development strategies to reduce costs by 60%, and a qualified, vetted team was assembled within days, not months, reducing the time to market by as much as 30%.

We also helped the Dryft team refine their scope of work during the Discovery Phase and delivered an app with features like an online booking system, Lyft or Scoop ride-sharing service integration, and a Dryft section that allowed users to follow other users and keep track of their own stats.

Welfare app Avanto Care

In Sweden, we worked with Avanto Care to develop a welfare app that focuses on elderly care. This app is designed as a tool for patients to manage their health and stay in touch with loved ones 24 hours a day. Avanto Care wanted to be the most responsive and inclusive company in welfare technology, and we at ProCoders shared this desire. Our developers participated in building a feature-rich app that is easy to use not by medical professionals, but by regular people. This app provides data-driven work with insights, and quality follow-up, helping to establish proactive care.

One of the biggest challenges for our developers was to make a sustainable data security system because when you work with such sensitive information this is the main thing to consider. We used hi-tech solutions, and we are proud of the results. 

CCM system HANDLE

HANDLE is another project that ProCoders worked on, providing software development services to help create a comprehensive Capital Cycle Management (CCM) system for hospitals to effectively manage their equipment. We helped HANDLE develop and refine the scope of work during the Discovery Phase and assembled a team of experienced developers who worked with the client’s existing CTO leadership. With the support of our team, HANDLE was able to build a logistics management chain for hospital equipment, incorporating features like equipment warehouse management, asset movement tracking, and depreciation calculation.

At ProCoders, we understand that every client has their unique pain points, which is why we prefer an individualized approach. We emphasize collaboration and communication to ensure that the vision of our clients is reflected in the final product. We have developers with experience in healthcare software already hired and ready to join your team for the project to build healthcare app. This is a cost-effective option for most businesses as it frees their hands from additional personnel and resources; it also reduces time-to-market and ensures faster production.

Contact us today to learn more about how we, as a healthcare app development company can help you achieve your goals.

Conclusion

How to develop a healthcare app? It is a complex but feasible project if you have the required resources. Fortunately, companies like ProCoders exist to ease the burden of recruiting and managing a development team.

There are thousands of mHealth apps on the market, but how can anyone tell which ones actually work? In this guide, we suggested a few noteworthy ideas to experiment with, giving you the chance to find your niche and stand out from the crowd. If you’re trying to break into the mHealth market, outsourcing to ProCoders is a great starting point.