Starting a medical startup needs a deep evaluation of ideas, trends, and development. The upward thrust of the COVID-19 pandemic turned into adversity and worldwide bad luck. But, for the healthcare sector covid has become the game changer. Before covid, nobody had thought twice to visit the doctor or health centre for pretty much anything. All that was modified in 2020, when COVID19 turned the world upside down. In a few places, healthcare transformed as an online emergency service, when people began to keep away from going to the health centre or the emergency rooms, afraid of catching the infection.
COVID-19 forced the sector into survival mode, ensuing in improvements and modernization, giving healthcare carriers possibilities to move towards the era of technological advancement. In fact, the person who had been detected positive with COVID-19 or had signs can use the web healthcare session to connect to their doctors. Over time, the customers have found out to evolve to era like video consultations and hence, they depend greater on digital sessions over offline visit.
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What are healthcare apps?
Healthcare apps are those apps, which can be developed for internet interfaces, can resource doctors’ everyday workflow through supporting them to track their patients’ health, appointments, and control staff. So, whilst one says healthcare app development, it means growing software programs for one or greater platforms, in order to be used to offer a healthcare service.
Benefits of healthcare apps
- No more waiting rooms
Patients hate when they have to wait for hours just for a 10mins visit. The app would not only make the process smooth but also helps the patients to check the available time and visit accordingly. It will increase the patients’ satisfaction level, reduce the crowd and protect from infection transmissions.
- Available anytime, anywhere
The app allows the multiple doctors to be available 24*7 at multiple locations. The app would be accessible on any device whether phone or laptop. That means doctors can examine the patients from their home, without any physical contact and can be available even at midnight.
- No more reminder calls
The app will send the notifications before the scheduled appointment, it will save the telephone bills and time of making calls. The main advantage of it is that the patient can reschedule, change and cancel the appointment in case of emergency.
- More efficient and productive services
The app will help the staff to focus more on core activities other than booking appointments. This makes the staff more productive and can work more efficiently.
- Cashless payment option
In the era of cashless economy, doctors can connect the app with the online payment options i.e., no need to carry cash and be a part of the digital economy.
Develop a healthcare app?
Here are some crucial steps which can help you to build a doctor appointment app for your clinic, so the doctors too can spend some time with their loved ones rather than giving appointments.
1. Ensure the database is ready
The first and foremost part of developing any home depot health check app is the database. You need to make sure that patients can easily browse the profile including the experience, certificates, ratings and feedback till current patient. This will help the users to analyse whether the doctor or the health centre met the expectations in the past or not.
2. Conduct user research
Before making an app, it’s important to collect and analyse the user data and information. You should conduct the research and find out how much market share you can potentially capture by analysing the users’ needs according to their search for the healthcare industry.
3. Plan app functionality
The app should function in a way that it lets the user search for the doctor according to specialty, experience, ratings and location. It helps the patients to schedule an appointment with a doctor using a calendar, push the notifications related to reminding appointments a few times a week so that the patient will not forget upcoming appointments.
4. Develop and test a prototype
The most obvious step is to develop the prototype and then test it. The prototype will be developed from all the information gathered in the previous step and define how your users will interact with the doctor. So, it is very important while developing the prototype, you will be making it in a user friendly way.
5. Design clear navigation
The app should be designed in such a way that it will provide the complete navigation from the users’ location to the doctors’ clinic. Also, try to place the navigation options at the top level, it will help the users to easily locate the doctor without getting confused.
6. Choose visuals, colours and fonts
Colour and visuals speak more clearly than words. You need to make sure that the visual, colours and fonts you are choosing must be relevant and match the app content. For best results, make your own account and test everything.
Cost to Build a Healthcare App
The cost of developing a healthcare app may vary from app to app. It depends on the following:
1. Discovery phase, estimation & UI/UX design
This phase budget depends on the number of people involved and their hourly rates. It is the initial step of developing any program before writing the code. The phase includes defining stakeholders, users and competitors research, project goals, value proposition, time and budget estimation. An approximate idea of the total cost is around $8,400.
2. Development stage
The budget of the development stage varies from country to country like in India approximately $20-$30 per hour while in the UK it is $35-$175 per hour. This stage includes all the important steps for the successful development of the app from designing to testing. An approximate idea of the total cost is around $25,600.
3. Testing & Launch
Before launching it is important to test the app first and the final step of making an app is to launch i.e., release the app on google play store. The release of app involves the cost of $25 approx. which is the fees to be paid to google play store and for apple store the fees is $99.Hence, the approximate cost of testing and launching would be $6,480. Check home depot health check app details here for example.
4. Writing technical documentation
From technical documentation we mean user manuals, online help or screencasts. As it is important to provide technical documents to make the app easy to use. Again, it also depends on country to country like in the US it costs $607 while in California $55. An approximate idea of the total cost is around $1,600.
Conclusion
Building a new healthcare app requires a lot of effort, including time and money. The cost in terms of money approximately varies from $40,000 to $80,000. But, it is just a one-time investment which is going to give you a lot of everything, not just money, but it also benefits you with some extra time, good quality services, work from home and many more. One of the most irritating chunks to do is to schedule an appointment which would be much simpler with the app development. Also, it helps the economy to become paperless and cashless as the prescription would be generated online and so are payments.