Telemedicine App Development: A Comprehensive Guide

Did you know that telemedicine reached the 80% adoption mark overall, becoming the preferred channel for prescription care and minor illness? The industry boomed in the 2000s and continues to gain trust, as we can see by the growth of the market. In 2023, the volume was at $114.98 billion; by 2030, it’s expected to reach $380.3 billion!

We at ProCoders have had experience working in the Healthcare sector, creating a platform with IoT capabilities, and we thought it was a good idea to write a full guide on telehealth app development for hospitals and clinics to provide our potential partners with an idea of the:

• Requirements
• Steps
• examples of successful apps
• Industry trends, and more.

5-Step Telemedicine App Development Guide

So, how to develop a healthcare app? Based on our experience, the process involves the following steps.

1. Platform Selection

Choosing the right platform for your app is crucial. For telemedicine mobile app development, the decision between iOS and Android hinges on the target audience’s preferences and geographic distribution. iOS is favored for its security and affluent user base, whereas Android offers a broader reach globally.

You can hire mobile app developers through ProCoders, and we can save you time and money by opting for cross-platform development. This approach not only speeds up development but also simplifies maintenance and updates. Plus, it ensures your app reaches a wider audience without the extra costs of native development. 

For desktop applications, you can choose between native apps, which offer high performance and system integration, and web-based apps, which are easier to maintain and accessible from any browser.

When deciding on the backend, evaluate the benefits of a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, which is cost-effective and quick to deploy, against custom comprehensive solutions that offer tailored functionality but require a greater initial investment.

Also, consider the long-term financial implications: SaaS involves lower upfront costs but ongoing fees, while custom development has higher initial telemedicine app development cost but could be more economical over time due to lower operational expenses. Each choice impacts the overall strategy and financial planning of your project.

2. Designing the Ideal Telehealth App

Focus on User Interface Design – The user interface (UI) should be intuitive and accessible, designed to cater to a diverse range of users, including those with limited tech proficiency. An effective UI enhances user engagement and satisfaction by simplifying navigation and making essential features readily accessible.

3. API Integration

Selecting the right APIs is crucial for the success of telemedicine apps, as they significantly enhance app functionality. Key APIs like VSee SDK, VIDYO, WebRTC, OpenTok (Vonage), Twilio, and Acuity offer varied strengths in video communications, scheduling, and more, catering to different technical needs of an app.

It is essential to choose APIs that align well with your app’s specific requirements and can provide reliable and scalable services. Factors to consider include the level of support offered, latency issues, compatibility with other technologies, and the overall cost. These considerations help ensure that the chosen APIs integrate smoothly and effectively enhance the app’s performance.

4. App Testing

Comprehensive testing ensures the app for patients is functional, secure, and user-friendly. This should include usability testing to gauge the app’s ease of use, performance testing to assess its responsiveness and stability, and security testing to ensure all patient data is securely handled and compliant with relevant healthcare regulations.

5. Deployment and Ongoing Maintenance

Once tested, the app can be deployed. However, deployment is not the final step—ongoing maintenance is essential to address any emerging issues, release updates, and ensure the app remains compatible with updated operating systems and third-party services. Regular updates should also consider user feedback to continuously improve the app and add new features as the market evolves.

By carefully navigating these development steps, you can create a telemedicine app that not only meets the immediate health needs of users but also remains a viable and competitive tool in the evolving digital healthcare landscape.

Brief Market Overview of Telehealth App Development

Over the years, there has been a gradual but consistent shift towards remote service delivery, including telehealth, which has coincided with the rise in smartphone adoption. For more than a decade, the World Health Organization has recognized the need for telehealth services worldwide.

The pandemic significantly accelerated the demand for digital health solutions, as evidenced by the surge in healthcare deals. In 2021, U.S.-based digital healthcare startups secured a total of $21 billion in venture funding, surpassing the previous record of $14 billion set in 2020.

Projected growth in the digital health market’s ‘Online Doctor Consultations’ segment alone is substantial, with global revenue expected to rise by $9.5 billion over the period from 2024 to 2028, marking a 36.14 percent increase. This consistent upward trend, extending over eleven consecutive years, is anticipated to culminate in 2028, when revenues are estimated to reach a new peak of $35.83 billion.

Also, according to Market.us:

• 76% of individuals aged 55 and older have utilized telemedicine.
• 73% of residents in rural areas use telemedicine.
• 98% of transgender patients report having used telemedicine.
• 61% of patients prefer using telemedicine for prescription management, and 51% use it for receiving care for minor illnesses.
• 96% of telepsychiatry patients are satisfied with virtual mental healthcare.

Also, 58% of responders stated that their healthcare providers offered telemedicine services.

Telehealth presents new opportunities to solve healthcare problems for people around the world. We have previously written on how to make a medical app. However, this article offers a detailed guide on how to build telemedicine apps.

5 Trends in Telemedicine and Telehealth

The future of telehealth is bright, with recent innovations significantly enhancing patient care and operational efficiency. Here are five key trends in the field of telemedicine:

1. Virtual Reality Integration: Using virtual reality to improve patient care by providing immersive therapy experiences and realistic training simulations for medical professionals.
2. Telemedicine App Development: Standardizing the development of telemedicine apps across hospitals and healthcare providers to make medical consultation and management more accessible.
3. Artificial Intelligence Advancements: AI is increasingly used to enhance diagnostics and treatment plans, leading to more personalized and accurate patient care.
4. Augmented Reality for Diagnosis: Augmented reality improves diagnostic accuracy and testing, giving doctors a more detailed view of patient conditions in real time.
5. Natural Language Processing in Consultations: Natural language processing enhances the patient experience during consultations, ensuring more natural and effective communications.

These trends showcase how technological integration is transforming healthcare, making it more efficient and patient-focused.

Why Should Businesses Build a Telemedicine App?

If you haven’t yet adopted a telehealth application, you might be missing significant business opportunities.

Let’s focus on the reasons to build a telemedicine app that increase business recognition, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

Expanding Market Reach

By offering telemedicine services, healthcare providers can extend their reach beyond traditional geographical limitations. This expansion allows businesses to tap into a larger patient base, including those in rural or underserved areas, potentially increasing the number of clients and boosting revenue.

Enhanced Revenue Streams

Telemedicine apps provide additional revenue options through diversified service offerings such as on-demand consultations, subscription-based models, and premium services for specialized care. These models attract a broader spectrum of patients seeking convenience and immediate care, thereby driving up service usage and profitability.

Improved Operational Efficiency

Implementing a telemedicine app can significantly reduce overhead costs associated with physical medical facilities. By minimizing the need for space and in-person staff, businesses can lower operational costs while managing patient care more efficiently. Additionally, the ability to handle more consultations virtually increases productivity without corresponding increases in facility costs.

Competitive Differentiation

In a rapidly evolving healthcare market, offering telemedicine services can set a business apart from competitors. By providing innovative technological solutions such as telemedicine, businesses can enhance their brand reputation as forward-thinking and patient-centered, attracting patients who value convenience and modern care approaches.

Better Patient Retention and Satisfaction

Telemedicine apps improve patient engagement and satisfaction by providing flexible, accessible healthcare services. Higher satisfaction leads to better patient retention rates and more positive reviews, which are crucial for business growth in the digital age. Moreover, satisfied patients are more likely to refer others, organically growing the customer base.

Data-Driven Insights for Enhanced Decision Making

Telemedicine apps can collect a wealth of data on patient interactions, treatment outcomes, and service efficiency. This data is invaluable for making informed business decisions, optimizing service offerings, and tailoring marketing strategies to meet patient needs more effectively.

Developing a telemedicine app not only aligns with current healthcare trends but also offers substantial business benefits by opening up new revenue opportunities, reducing costs, and enhancing patient care and satisfaction. These strategic advantages make it a worthwhile investment for any healthcare business looking to innovate and expand in today’s digital marketplace.

Of course, hospitals are not going away at all. However, the preventive healthcare that telemedicine app development projects enable saves the lives of many people before they even reach a hospital or clinic.

Must-have Features of Telemedicine App

It is not easy to build a telemedicine app. There are several considerations to be made. However, we have tried to narrow all the factors down to a few must-have features.

Medical History Management

It is important to create a telehealth platform that collects and stores various patient electronic health records smartly and securely. This requires a secure database and server, so some serious work must be done on the app’s backend. Various datasets are stored, from appointment schedules to prescription information.

All of this data must be stored securely, kept private between the patient and their physician, and transferable according to the patient’s instructions. That’s why security is important as you create a telehealth platform.

Secure Authentication and Encryption

Security and privacy are very important in how to build telemedicine apps, given that they store very sensitive data that malicious characters would love to get hold of. Features such as multi-factor authentication and biometric identification (face recognition, fingerprint, etc.) should be provided to raise the bar of security in the app. Also, strong encryption (preferably AES 256-bit encryption level) is necessary to implement the highest level of data protection.

Appointment booking and reminders

A telemedicine app is mainly used for finding doctors and scheduling visits. So, of course, there must be a calendar function that allows patients to fix visits through an intuitive booking process. To create a telehealth platform, the calendar function must be designed intuitively to make consideration for the tight schedules of specialists. There should also be an alert function that sends patients and doctors automatic reminders whenever their appointment is due or almost due.

Prescription Management

When you build a telemedicine app, physicians need to be able to monitor their patients to determine if they are faithful to their medication regimen. In the same vein, patients need a system that notifies them whenever it is time to use their prescription. Hence, when you create a telehealth platform, there must be a comprehensive prescription management function for both sides, complete with considerations for allergies, drug interactions, and so on.

Audio/Video Consultation

One of the more advanced features, this is inevitable for custom telemedicine app development. The video feature is particularly important because physicians need to be able to visually monitor a patient’s condition in order to make the correct diagnosis. So, the video quality must be high (low latency too) and communication must be secure.

Search

Of course, to find physicians, there must be a search feature included as you build a telemedicine app. As you create a telehealth platform, this search feature must be robust in order to accommodate various requirements as defined by the multiple filters available. That is, users should be able to search using keywords such as location, specialization, rating, and so on.

At ProCoders, we offer a unique solution called OmniMind. This AI platform empowers businesses to create projects and integrate their own knowledge bases into the OmniMind environment. With this setup, you can easily develop an AI assistant, a smart search feature, or another type of AI-enhanced tool for your application. The process requires no coding—simply provide your knowledge base and specify your requirements for OmniMind.

Payment 

Most telemedicine apps charge a small fee for access to their services. However, you can access some apps for free if you have healthcare insurance in place. Nevertheless, it is important to incorporate payment API gateways from reliable platforms such as Stripe, PayPal, Square, etc. in order to manage payments seamlessly and securely. Also, users should be able to access their transaction history.

Analytics

This is mainly a server-side feature that allows people on the admin panel to analyse big data and use this data to improve their services. Analytics data can also be used to assess individual physicians to determine if they are providing an adequate level of service. However, such analytics should be done without compromising the privacy of users.

AI Chatbots

These intelligent assistants can handle a range of tasks, from scheduling upcoming appointments to answering common medical questions, all without human intervention. By automating these routine inquiries, chatbots significantly enhance efficiency, allowing healthcare providers to focus more on patient care rather than administrative tasks. Furthermore, AI chatbots can provide patients with instant responses, which is crucial for improving user engagement and satisfaction. This technology not only streamlines operations but also enriches the user experience by offering 24/7 support and personalized communication.

Regulatory Compliance and Data Privacy in Telemedicine App Development

In the development of telemedicine apps, adhering to healthcare industry regulations is critical to ensuring legal compliance and safeguarding patient data. Here are some of the key regulations that developers must consider:

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the U.S.: HIPAA mandates the protection and confidential handling of protected health information (PHI). For telemedicine apps, this involves strict security measures to safeguard patient data during transmission, storage, and processing. HIPAA compliance also requires the implementation of access, audit, and integrity controls, alongside secure encryption of data transmissions.
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe: GDPR establishes rigorous data protection and privacy standards across the European Union. This regulation stresses the importance of user consent, data anonymization, protections for cross-border data transfers, and the rights of individuals to access, amend, and delete their personal data. Telemedicine apps that operate in Europe or handle the data of EU citizens must ensure they are compliant with GDPR.
• Other Regional Laws: Different countries may have specific healthcare regulations that also need to be followed. For example, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada and the Data Protection Act in the UK. Developers need to ensure that their telemedicine apps comply with all pertinent local and international laws applicable to the regions where the app will be used.

Ensuring compliance with these regulations is essential not only for legal operation but also for building trust with users by protecting their personal information.

The Tech Stack for a Telehealth App Development

There are various tools and technologies that you can use to build a viable tech stack for your app. It covers different tools according to the different prominent features that a telemedicine application would have.

Backend

• Laravel PHP: Laravel is a framework based on PHP that promotes expressive syntax. It uses the MVC (model-view-controller) architecture. The benefits of Laravel in telemedicine app development include intuitive authentication and data security, seamless data sharing and interoperability, third-party integrations, traffic management, etc.
• Node.js: Node.js is one of the most powerful backend frameworks available. More so, even though it is a predominantly backend technology, it can be used for full-stack development, thereby maximising resources. The Node.js runtime is event-driven and asynchronous, making it so versatile that scaling the app up or down becomes very seamless and intuitive as you create a telehealth platform.

Frontend

• React: React is a component-based, declarative, open-source framework for frontend development. It is appreciated for its speed, flexibility, high performance, and ease of use. However, perhaps its biggest benefit is that it provides flawless integration when you create a telehealth platform for mobile operating systems via React Native.

• VueJS: VueJS is a JavaScript framework that is primed for progressiveness. That means it is a versatile framework that supports incremental adoption for perceptive scalability. It is also a very lightweight framework, even while retaining rich functionality.

Mobile development

• Flutter: Flutter is Google’s SDK for building cross-platform mobile apps from a single codebase. Though relatively recent, it has soared in popularity compared with existing giants such as React Native and Xamarin.
• React Native: This is another powerful tool for building cross-platform native apps for mobile devices. Its integration with ReactJS makes the toolkit even more powerful in how to build telemedicine apps.

Contact ProCoders, your healthcare mobile app development company, to make sure you tech stack and healthcare tech experts suit your goals and project requirements.

Notifications

• Twilio: Twilio is a customer engagement platform with useful APIs that you can embed in your code for notifications, HTTP basic authentication and SMS alerts.

Payments

• PayPal: PayPal needs no introduction. Its powerful API makes payments easy to collect and manage. It also uses secure authentication standards (OAuth) in order to protect financial records.
• Stripe: Stripe was built to enable businesses to accept payments easily. Many companies use Stripe integrations to seamlessly manage payments via APIs.

Database

• MongoDB: MongoDB is one of the most popular database management tools for mobile apps. It provides a unified API, real-time analytics, unlimited scalability, data as code, and several other functionalities.
• MySQL: Another renowned tool for managing databases on the backend, MySQL provides in-depth analytics, automation, and scalability via its HeatWave feature.

Cloud functionality

• Amazon Web Services: By far the market leader in cloud technology solutions, providing services across cloud storage, server hosting, networking, cloud computing, and so on. 
• Google Cloud: One of the most viable alternatives to AWS is Google Cloud. Google Cloud provides multi-cloud and hybrid cloud services, as well as advanced analytics, work collaboration, security, and database management.

How Healthcare Organizations Make Money from Telemedicine App Development

Subsctiption Model

In the subscription model, users pay a recurring fee to access the telemedicine services. This approach is ideal for ensuring a steady revenue stream and can be tiered to offer different access levels or medical services and medical records based on the subscription level. It is particularly effective for users who require regular consultations and prefer predictable billing.

Examples: Teladoc Health, MDLive

Pay-Per-Consultation

This model charges users for each consultation they book through the app. It appeals to users who prefer not to commit to a subscription and need occasional health consultations. Pay-per-consultation ensures that users only pay for the services they use, which can attract a broader demographic.

Examples: Doctor On Demand, Amwell

Freemium with In-App Purchases

The freemium model offers basic features for free while charging for a larger complexity of features or services through in-app purchases. This strategy can attract a large user base initially with free services and generate revenue from users who choose to pay for more comprehensive features or services.

Examples: HealthTap, PlushCare

Each of these models offers unique advantages and can be tailored to fit the specific services and target audience of your telemedicine app

How Much Does Telehealth App Development Cost?

The cost of developing a telehealth application can be as high as $250,000 if you are building a complex product or as low as $80,000 for a simple application. However, you can have a minimum viable product (MVP) ready for an average price of $25,000. 

We can only provide rough estimates as we don’t know the application performance requirements and delivery timing you plan for the app. You can contact us for custom estimates based on your project’s specific needs.

In every project concerning how to develop a telemedicine app, the final cost depends on the app’s features, the complexity of integrations, the technologies deployed, the telemedicine app developers employed, the period of development, and so on. Therefore, it may be impossible to give a definite cost right away. Typically, you should prepare estimates based on an expected completion period of three to twelve months.

Our Experience: ProCoders’ Telemedicine App Development Services

ProCoders demonstrated their deep expertise in healthcare technology by collaborating with Avanto Care, a leading eHealth platform in Sweden specializing in elderly care. By providing staff augmentation, our technical team played a pivotal role in enhancing Avanto Care’s IoT capabilities of connecting medical devices to the sensors and the platform for health tracking,, which are crucial for predictive elderly care management. The partnership focused on expanding the platform’s functionalities, including risk management and data visualization, tailored to meet the needs of municipalities managing elderly care.

The collaboration with Avanto Care underscores ProCoders’ capability to navigate the complex requirements of healthcare applications. Our team composition and every expert’s contributions were instrumental in optimizing the platform’s infrastructure to meet GDPR and HSLF-FS standards, significantly shortening the product development cycle and enabling Avanto Care to scale up efficiently. This project not only showcases ProCoders’ technical proficiency but also their ability to swiftly adapt to industry-specific needs, reinforcing their position as a trusted partner in healthcare technology solutions.

Conclusion

Throughout this exploration of telehealth app development, we’ve delved into the complexities and immense potential of integrating technology with healthcare—a sector of critical global importance. The promise of telehealth applications in enhancing healthcare accessibility and efficiency makes them a worthwhile investment. However, success in this field requires adherence to rigorous standards and smart planning to ensure that your application not only meets clinical needs but also delivers on functionality and user engagement.

The development of a telemedicine app, while complex and potentially costly, is certainly achievable with the right strategies for cost optimization and project management. For instance, outsourcing your project to an experienced software development agency like ProCoders can provide access to specialized skills and innovative solutions, making the process more manageable and cost-effective.

If concerns about development costs or project execution are holding you back, consider a consultation with ProCoders today. Our project team is ready to help you navigate the intricacies of telehealth app development and turn your vision into a dynamic, impactful solution.