Telehealth App Development: Costs, Features, and Pitfalls

Updated 29 Apr 2023

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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital health. As a result, telemedicine app development now is the primary goal of healthcare organizations that want to provide patients with healthcare services from a distance.

Statista’s report shows that the global telemedicine market will reach $559.52 billion by 2027. This means that healthcare will inevitably go online. But what benefits does telemedicine bring to businesses?

Telemedicine lets both doctors and patients to simplify the consultation process and always keep in touch. Doctors running a private medical practice no longer have to rent a working space, while hospitals can reduce the readmission rate. Besides, both of those healthcare providers gain a new powerful channel for distributing their services. Keep up with this article to learn how to make telemedicine app, its cost, and features.

To put in short, telemedicine app development cost ranges from $75,000 to $250,000+.

An average price of building telehealth apps of different types:

  • Store-and-forward: $75,000 - $100,000+
  • Remote monitoring: $90,000 - $200,000+
  • Real-time interactive: $80,000 - $150,000+

The numbers are approximate, the final price will depend on the specifities of the telehealth app and features implemented.

How Do Telemedicine Apps Work?

First things first: you have to understand what telemedicine really is.

Simply put, telemedicine is a method of delivering healthcare services to patients remotely. There are three main things that patients and doctors need to use telehealth:

  • Custom software
  • Camera
  • Microphone

Software is responsible for connecting physicians with patients and storing EHRs. The camera is used to examine patients, and the microphone is used for voice chat. However, telemedicine app development solutions can be divided into different types.

Let’s go through them:

  • Online video conference. The most common type of telehealth app. It lets doctors examine patients via the camera of their devices. Sometimes patients already know what stands behind their symptoms, so they just need a confirmation of the diagnosis. Instead of going to the hospital and waiting in lines, patients can simply reserve an online appointment with a doctor.

  • Treatment advice. This type applies to patients who already have a treatment plan. In case users have any questions concerning their treatment, like a drug schedule, they can text their doctors. Text messages don't distract doctors from other clients, so these messages are prioritized. For any more serious question, these apps usually have a voice call feature.

  • Prescription management. This type allows patients to get drug prescriptions online. Technologies behind telehealth apps store users’ EHRs, so physicians can decide on prescriptions based on medical history. The only thing users have to do is to apply for a recipe and wait until this appliance is submitted. Then, they can come to the pharmacy with a printed prescription or simply show it on their devices.

Find out more about e prescription app development and its benefits for healthcare services in our article

Why Build a Telemedicine App?

Now we’re clear with the concept of telemedicine. However, what are the benefits of this software for both patients and businesses? Let’s single out each of them.

Reduced Healthcare Costs

With remote healthcare services, businesses don't need to rent a working space. Thus, more self-employed and experienced doctors can offer their services. Previously, they’ve worked in a company, but telemedicine app features allow them to become independent and provide services on their own.

Self-employed doctors aren’t the only one who can benefit from telemedicine app development. Clinics get higher customer flow because patients don’t have to wait in lines, and the overall consultation process becomes faster. Thus, hospitals can earn more revenue in shorter terms. Moreover, Researchgate’s study “Telemedicine, Cost Effectiveness, and Patients Satisfaction” that the average maintenance costs were reduced by 94% with the use of telehealth apps.

Time-Efficient Treatment

In a conventional hospital, some doctors are working, while others may have a day off. A complex health screening could take several weeks and hours spent on commute. But not with telemedicine. The time spent by a person to get health services through telemedicine apps was reduced by 56%.

How to build a telehealth application that saves time for your customers? Let users book an appointment with a doctor at a convenient time without even leaving their house. The scheduling app created in a process of doctor appointment mobile app development will allow the consultation start right in time, so you can plan several appointments in a row.

Easier Access to Healthcare

NRHA claims that there is a problem of healthcare workforce shortage. Telehealth apps can be of great use for people who live in distant, rural areas. If there are no healthcare facilities nearby, it’s enough to have an app and a cellular network or WiFi. Besides, people from countries with a low level of healthcare can get consultations from foreign physicians. For example, nearly 75% of people with mental disorders receive no treatment in middle income economies. Mental health app development makes more manageable and effective by providing 24/7 online support within smartphones.

Effective Time Management for Doctors

According to “Physician Burnout — and Virtual Care as a Solution” research By Prentiss Taylor, M.D., around 15% of physicians suffer from burnout and depression. Both self-employed doctors and employees at hospitals and clinics can effectively manage their time. With the help of in-app schedule and push notifications, doctors won’t miss any appointments.

As for the companies, they can sync CRMs with the software during telehealth app development. This telemedicine app feature provides an extended functionality both to administrative staff and for doctors. Administration can track the doctors’ workload to maintain their work-life balance, while doctors can apply for sick days and shift changes via the app.

Convenient Access to EHR

Telehealth software keeps EHRs (electronic health records), so that doctors could access them on demand. A single place for a patient's clinical records saves the doctor's time. Patients can also keep updated about the amendments made in EHR. The only issue is security. Health record leaks are unacceptable, and one mistake can lead to enormous fines. We’ll discuss the safety issues later on. HealthIT.gov states that 75 % of doctors say that their EHR allows them to improve patient engagement by providing better patient care and eliminating medication errors.

Technical Side of Telemedicine App Development

How to create a telemedicine platform? You have to come up with a feature list and decide on tools for telemedicine software development. Any telehealth app should have a physician's side and a patient’s side. They will have different feature sets according to their roles.

Telemedicine app MVP features

Telemedicine app essential features

Telemedicine App Features for Patients

The patient’s side should have features like registration, video/voice calls, uploading EHRs, and more.

Now, we’ll single out each of them.

Registration

First and foremost, sign-in feature. The personal account is required because telemedicine apps store a lot of personal data, like EHR. Besides, it’s more convenient to monitor appointment schedules in-app rather than keeping them in mind. Patients can sign-in via email or with the help of third-party tools, like Facebook Login and Google Sign-In. However, personal accounts have to be secured, so take care of two-step authentication via SMS or email.

Profile management

After the registration, a user has to set up their personal profile. It includes general personal data like name, gender, age. The most important data in a profile is the user's EHR. With the help of it, doctors can assess patients' health conditions and look through their previous treatment history. Mind that this information is private and should be available only to doctors and the owner. HIPAA regulations prohibit the access to EHR of unverified third-parties, so take it seriously.

Patient dashboard

This feature will include patient information in the form of various charts, diagrams, and status bars. You can use the dashboard to track changes in status, identify positive or negative trends, patient alerts like ER visits, and many other types of medically relevant data.

Search & filters

Search algorithms will help patients find the right doctors. With the help of filters, users can search according to medical specialty, proximity, language, rating, and more.

Video conferencing

A key element in telemedicine app development. The video should be transmitted in the highest possible quality so that the doctor could see possible traumas and symptoms. Audio should also be loud and clear. Needless to say that every user has a different internet connection, so your app has to adjust the video quality automatically to avoid bufferization. Still, you have to optimize the real-time connection as best as possible. Streaming protocols like RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) and WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) are great telemedicine technologies examples for building a video chat.

Text chat

When there’s no need to make video calls, users can send a text message to physicians. This is an option for solving minor issues because text messages don’t require a separate consultation. Video calls can distract the doctor from other patients, while text messages can be answered in spare time. Attachment of photos and files is a great addition to the text chat. As for the tools, Twilio is a platform for building live chats for applications. Twilio has recently become a HIPAA-eligible platform, so it’s safe to use it for telemedicine app development.

Calendar

The in-app calendar allows patients to monitor and manage appointments with physicians. In case users need to reschedule the consultation, they can make changes right in the calendar and wait for the doctor’s approval. The schedule can be synced with Google Calendars with the help of Google Calendar API. Thus, users will receive notifications from Google Calendar and see the specified dates with the help of a widget.

Payment details

A vital feature for any telehealth app development process. You can choose between a custom payment service or a third-party system. Either way, mind security matters. Before using third-parties, you have to conduct a research and choose a reliable provider. When building your own payment system, follow every up-to-date data regulation and security protocol.

As for the payment gateways, Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal are the most popular telemedicine app development solutions on the market. They grant high-speed transactions and secure payments. However, the breaking point of third-parties is fees.

Most popular payment gateways rates

ServiceStripeBriantreePayPal

Standard fee

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

Supported countries

39, including UK, USA, Australia, Westen and Central European countries

46, including USA, Canada, Australia, UK

202, including USA, Canada, Australia, UK

Chargeback fee

$15/transaction

$15/transaction

$20/transaction

Usually, third-party systems can meet all the business needs. However, if you plan to build a custom payment system, it’s better to hire a professional software development company.

Rating system

Rating systems, reviews, and grades will help patients to find a trustworthy physician. You can make an Uber-like scale of one to five. Users can rate the doctor after their appointment and leave a short comment. A telehealth app's top priority is the client's health, so think about penalties for indecent doctors. Again, you can follow Uber’s example. If the doctor has a grade of three or less, they are asked to improve the quality of service. If nothing changes in a period of time, the account gets banned.

Clients can also get grades. If an appointment was scheduled, and the patient never appeared, the doctor might put them a grade of one for the wasted time.

Notifications

If you’ve decided to give up on sync with Google Calendar, you definitely need to develop notifications for your app. They’ll remind users about appointments and keep up with the updates of your app. Firebase Cloud Messaging is a platform that helps you to send notifications from your server to users’ devices.

Find out everything about hospital mobile app development in our article

Telemedicine App Features for Physicians

The doctor's side also has some specific telemedicine app features. Some of them are similar to the patient's side, while others are different.

Let’s take a closer look.

Physician profile

Here, physicians have to specify their specialization, medical competencies, experience, and more. The more information doctors provide about themselves, the more credible they become for clients.

Calendar management

Telehealth technology tools allow you to give the doctor an admin role in the patient's calendar. This way, it’ll be easier for doctors to place the appointment in their schedules. Plus, there will be one less issue for the client. In case if a patient has to postpone the consultation, they have to leave a request for a doctor and wait for feedback.

Viewing EHRs

Unlike patients, doctors should be able to browse through their clients’ EHRs. Make sure that doctors can’t download EHRs from your database. In case they lose the phone with this sensitive data, both of you will be fined.

Communication

Telehealth app development requires a two-sided communication between patient and doctor. Doctors should be able to text patients to inquire about the treatment process and health condition. In case a patient needs a planned physical examination, the physician should be able to arrange appointments independently from the client.

Got lost in features?

Our experienced business analysts can help with the feature list for your app

Telemedicine Software Solutions in Action: App Demo

We, at Cleveroad, designed a demo version of the Telemedicine app, so you can see how the Telemedicine platform can look and feel on the example of patient-side and provider-side solutions.

Technologies Behind Telemedicine Apps

As it comes clear, there’s plenty of telemedicine app features to develop. But what are the technologies behind telehealth, and how can you make your app even better? The majority of current development trends can come in handy during the telehealth app development. Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Cloud technologies, and more can be applied to your project. Let’s discuss these use cases in brief.

Artificial Intelligence

Chatbots are the most promising use case of AI in telemedicine. It’s obvious that doctors can’t always be available. A simple FAQ chatbot can answer users’ questions about the doctor’s schedule, competency, and more. If a patient doesn’t have any specific requests, chatbots can even reserve a consultation. Of course, chatbots can’t prescribe medicines or set up a treatment plan, but they can automate some routine processes and simplify the doctor’s workflow.

IoT

The Internet of Things is another telehealth technology example. With the help of wearables, doctors monitor a patient's condition and get urgent notifications in case of emergency. Fitness trackers, stress meters, scales, and more allow doctors to gather the patient’s health statistics and adjust treatment plans according to the data. Smart drug dispensers allow physicians to set a pills schedule without involving the patient. A dispenser will send notifications to the user’s phone when it's time to take pills.

Cloud storage

When thinking about storage for all the gathered data, you have two options: cloud vs. on-premise. With an on-premise model, you’ll have to rent a place for servers, buy the hardware, and build a fault-tolerant network. Eventually, you get storage that you can manipulate and scale as you want. However, the expenses are way bigger than they would be with cloud storage.

With Amazon S3, you can get a gigabyte of space for $0,022 per month. Even though the price depends on your region and the amount of space you need, it’s still significantly cheaper than renting and maintaining your own servers. Plus, you don’t have to build a security system from scratch. Amazon made everything for you.

Blockchain

Blockchain technology allows patients and doctors to share the data in a secure encrypted format. Considering the sensitivity of the data, blockchain becomes an answer to the question: how to make a telemedicine app more secure? Healthcare professionals currently focus on health information exchanges through distributed networks to seamlessly share patient information.

Big Data

Health organizations generate and process a large amount of information. Big data enables healthcare institutions to collect and analyze EHRs (electronic healthcare records). The gathered information can be used to provide better care of patients, deliver more accurate diagnoses, do medical researches, and reduce healthcare costs. Moreover, Big Data analytics techniques can be utilized to measure the proper dose of medicines and create individual treatment plans for remote patients.

Deep learning

Deep Learning integration helps the telemedicine app to obtain insights from vast amounts of medical data. This technology facilitates the decision-making process and allows health providers to make more accurate predictions about patients’ well-being.

Our extensive guide on IoT for business covers some great use cases for healthcare. Check it out!

Technical Stack for Telemedicine App Development

We’re clear with technologies that can make your app even better. But what about the telehealth technology tools? Various programming languages, frameworks, third-party tools, cloud storage, are used during telehealth app development.

Here are the tools that can be used for telehealth projects:

Programming languages:

  • Kotlin, Java (Android)
  • Swift (iOS)

Back-end development:

  • Programming language: Node.js
  • Videoconferencing: RTMP, Twilio, WebRTC
  • Chat: Twilio, Socket.io
  • Database: MySQL
  • APIs and frameworks: Stripe, EC2, S3

Tools:

  • Search & filters: Elastic search
  • Mailing: Elastic Emails
  • Geolocation: Google Maps Platform
  • Notifications: Firebase Cloud Messaging

Notice: This tech stack is approximate and based on the features for doctors and patients listed above!

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Telemedicine App?

Since you already know all the features and the tools for telehealth app development, it's time to know the price to build a telemedicine software. Our estimate is based on the average hourly rate of $50/hour in Central Europe, Estonia.

Remember: this price is approximate. It varies according to your business needs and features.

First, take a look at the approximate telehealth app development cost for basic features.

Time to create a telemedicine app (development only)

FeaturesApprox time

Patient

Registration & Login

162

Profile management

165

Search & filters

256

Video calls

144

Voice calls

88

Text chat

293

Appointment management

235

Notifications

54

Doctor

Registration & Login

36

Profile management

140

Appointment management

214

Video calls

60

Voice calls

60

Text chat

60

Admin panel

272

Total development time

2239

Keep in mind that software developers aren't the only specialists you need on a team to build such a complex product.

Here's the full team composition you'll need:

  • Front-end developer
  • Back-end developer
  • UI/UX designer
  • Business Analyst
  • Project Manager
  • QA engineer
  • DevOps engineer
  • Team lead

Given that team composition and the amount of work, it'll cost you approximately $175,000 to create a telemedicine app. Feel free to contact our Senior Business Analysts to get a personalized estimation of your telehealth project

How cost estimation is done for your project:

We make two types of estimates for our clients: rough and detailed.

A rough estimate is calculated into the Discovery phase to orient the customer to the project's price. Its accuracy can be up to 75%. This type of estimate includes:

  • The general section describes the preparatory works that don’t change much throughout the project. It contains project specification, database setup, and REST architecture.
  • The development section consists of the 'business logic' and 'UI/UX' columns, where we indicate the appropriate number of hours needed to fulfill a specific part of work.
  • Third-parties integration aims to save the developers' time and the clients' money. Here we list the external sources to apply and determine the time for setting up.
  • The suggestions section includes different recommendations relating to the project improvements.

Note: The cost estimation described above is a rough estimate.

A detailed estimate is prepared with the obligatory participation of the developers and has almost 100% accuracy. It’s based on wireframes, project specifications, and other documentation. If a client already has a ready-made documentation package, we can provide a detailed estimate only within dedicated development team services.

Examples of Telemedicine Apps

Some healthcare providers went online a long time ago. Entrepreneurs realized all the benefits of remote healthcare services for both doctors and patients. We’re going to discuss the best examples of telemedicine app development to learn from their experience.

Doctor on Demand

Doctor on Demand is a US-based telemedicine app that enables patients to reach a wide range of healthcare professionals. Patients can schedule a video meeting using their phones or tablets. The most remarkable features are upfront pricing, video calls, Healthkit and Google Fit, medication management, and push notification.

In-app providers can treat different issues through video calls: from colds to skin conditions and cholesterol. The doctor analyzes the patients’ history and symptoms, carries out an exam, and makes a treatment plan based on results (prescriptions and lab work, if required). Besides, integrated HealthKit allows doctors to check a patient's temperature and blood pressure.

The app offers a private space for users to consult the doctors through video. You can select the therapist from a great group of specialists and address what’s bothering you. Moreover, you can get a mental health assessment for free to understand if you will take advantage of talking to a therapist.

Pricing: The price is $75 per medical visit, $130 per therapy, and $299 per psychiatry.

Teladoc

Teladoc is another telemedicine app available in the US only. It was founded in 2002 it’s currently the largest provider of telehealth services with the annual revenue of $605,5 million.

Teladoc has a number of telemedicine app features that improve user experience. Apart from video/audio calls and text chat, Teladoc allows users to add family members to their accounts. This way, users can schedule visits for every family member from a single account. Users have to describe the reason for the visit and attach several pictures that highlight the issue. Patients can also choose the nearest pharmacy. When they get a prescription, it’ll be automatically sent to this pharmacy.

At the end of the visit, customers get the doctor’s medical opinion, invoice, and prescription. Teladoc doesn’t have a fixed price plan. The cost varies depending on the type of visit and the patient’s health plan.

MDLive

MD Live is a close rival of Teladoc. It connects medical and pediatric doctors, patients, and insurers in the US and globally. The company was founded in 2009 by Charles S. Jones and reached revenue of $140 million.

The service specializes in medical, behavioral, and dermatology issues. Patients can reach the doctors using a smartphone, PC, or mobile app. The most prominent features are ePrescribe integration, video calls, mobile payments, health records, and instant messaging.

Pricing: The price varies from $0 to $284, depending on insurance.

Pitfalls of Telemedicine Apps

Despite a ton of advantages for businesses and users, telemedicine app development has some pitfalls that you should be ready to deal with. Strict security requirements and some limitations are discouraging entrepreneurs from getting into this niche.

Let’s figure out the main problems.

Regulatory Compliance

Since telemedicine applications deal with patients’ health records, they should be compliant with various regulatory and medical standards. These regulations aim to optimize healthcare information flow and protect sensitive data from cybersecurity-related threats.

Here is the list of standards (country-specific) that telehealth apps have to comply with to be secure and bring value to users:

  • HIPAA regulations (United States)
  • Complying with PIPEDA (Canada)
  • Data Protection Directive 1995/46/EC and the e-Privacy Directive 2002/58/EC/ IEC 62304 (Europe)

Besides, you have to comply with an additional set of laws and regulations:

  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
  • IMLC (Interstate Medical Licensure Compact) is an agreement between 29 states, the District of Columbia, and the Territory of Guam that allows licensed physicians to practice medicine across state lines within the Compact if they meet specific agreed-upon eligibility requirements.
  • Prescribing regulations in particular states.
  • Telemedicine regulations in particular states.

Security

Data safety is ensured by various telehealth technology tools, protocols, and algorithms. Some of the most common for telemedicine app development are AES 128 Bit and SHA 256. However, implementation of these algorithms is only half the battle. To provide complete protection, you have to conduct security self-assessment and search for new vulnerabilities after each update. Besides, clinics have to hold employee training and testing to make sure they know what details can’t be disclosed.

Video Quality

A slightly less terrifying issue that depends on the quality of users’ cameras and the appliance of streaming protocols. Video quality matters in cases when users have to show traumas to doctors. Poor video quality can lead to incorrect diagnosis and ineffective treatment. It’s a sure thing that device cameras play a vital role in video quality. But the poor video quality may also be a result of a weak code or bandwidth issues. Choose a vendor that knows how to make a telemedicine app with videoconferencing and has a solid streaming experience.

Limitations for Doctors

The last point concerns the telehealth niche as a whole. For now, remote medicine can’t provide the same results as a conventional. Physicians can visually examine the patient and provide them with prescriptions. But when it comes to serious health problems, remote medicine can’t do anything. X-ray, ultrasound, and comprehensive examination is only possible in hospitals. Telemedicine is a great tool for preventive and maintaining medicine, but it can’t totally replace physical healthcare providers.

By the way, here’s our guide on live streaming app development. There, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of every streaming protocol

Monetization Strategies for Telehealth Apps

Helping people is certainly an honorable thing, but any app won’t last long without funding. It’s time to go through the main revenue strategies for telemedicine software development.

Freemium

With a freemium pattern, the company offers some basic services for free. However, the app has additional features that users can access with a premium subscription. This strategy means that customers who purchased a premium version subsidize those users who use a free model of this app. The more users are interested in the free version, the more will convert into paid subscribers with time.

For example, Fitbit offers a free version of its fitness app. It’s not exactly a telemedicine software, but with a premium membership, this app provides great fitness and health insights.

Subscription

With a subscription business model app will generate revenues on a repeated periodic basis, like monthly payments. This model requires users to pay regardless of whether they use the app or not.

Doxy.me is a great example of how to develop a telemedicine app using a subscription model. Following Doxy.me’s example, you can charge healthcare providers exclusively. Or you can charge payments both from doctors and patients.

Fees

The most popular and profitable revenue model for telehealth app development. The app will charge a fee from each transaction made from the patient to the doctor. Teladoc became the most expensive telemedicine company due to this model. Teladoc is a B2B app that sells its services to clients on behalf of their employees. So, apart from transaction fees, Teladoc also charges businesses for working with their employees.

Telehealth apps with fees per visit

Apps that charge fees and their revenue

How to Make a Telemedicine App: Step-by-Step

Now, it's time to move on to the central part of our article - developing a telemedicine application for your business. Creating this kind of app requires a substantial responsibility and a certain amount of preparation because it directly affects people’s health. We split the whole process into several steps, and now we will discuss each point in detail.

Step 1. Pass Solution Design stage

First of all, share your idea with an experienced software vendor. Professional technical partner will help you to find the best solution that will best fit your needs. During the solution phase your vendor will help you to define business goals, a work scope and basic quality attributes.

Step 2. Go through the Discovery phase

At this stage your software provider helps you to make the final decisions as for design, tech stack and creating a roadmap for implementing telehealth app. After detailing the collected requirements, we provide the client the following discovery phase deliverables:

  • Design concepts and UX map
  • Feature Breakdown List (FBL)
  • Rough estimation with timeline and team composition
  • Detailed estimate of the product development costs by platforms
  • Development contract, etc.

Also, at this stage, the specialists can consult you on platforms to cover and services to employ. Here are some popular third-party APIs you can utilize to integrate into your app:

  • VSee SDK. It allows you to integrate end-to-end encrypted video calls into your telehealth app for iOS and Android platforms. The service complies with HIPAA regulations and has its own server-client, so there is no need to provide a service to set it up.
  • Vidyo. This telemedicine API enables doctors to talk to the patients in real-time. It doesn’t require a separate text chat API since it has its own built-in chat. You can also share the screen and make group video calls. However, it provides users with minimum customizations.
  • Twilio. Twilio is a programmable video API that runs on all browsers and mobile platforms. It provides multiple functionalities you can add to your telehealth app, including APIs for SMS messaging, voice calls, text chat, email, and fax.

Step 3. UI/UX design

Many founders come up with the idea, start creating their app right away, and then fail because the UI/UX design doesn't meet users' expectations. Don’t try to impress your potential customers. Instead, build a telemedicine app as easy to use as possible, without overloading users' attention. The healthcare providers and patients have to focus on the consultation, not striving to understand how to navigate and utilize your application.

Step 4. Development

The development stage is about building the app under the approved requirements. When it comes to telehealth app development, you may consider creating an MVP version of the product with basic features to reduce time to market or presenting a feature-packed telemedicine platform at once but at a higher expense. We highly recommend starting with MVP development because it’ll help you both trigger the users’ interest and prevent your business from possible losses.

Step 5. Quality Assurance and UAT Testing

At this stage, you have to ensure your product works flawlessly without interruptions. Once the development team performs the peer code reviews, the QA team conducts unit tests on different devices.

Despite that, the correct setup QA process means regular testing after each sprint, make a plan for final testing that handles everything you’ve tested before. On the top, it’s vital to execute stress testing before the release to see if your telemedicine app will manage an influx of new users.

Step 6. Deployment and Maintenance

Once all the previous phases are done, the application is deployed on the servers and placed into the app store to download and test. Both IOS and Android platforms obtain updates every year. Therefore, it’s crucial to upgrade a telehealth app accordingly to ensure it continues delivering the best customer experience.

We’ve made an A to Z software development process overview to keep you aware of all stages your application goes through.

How to Create a Telemedicine App: Cleveroad Experience

Cleveroad is a top-tier custom software development and maintenance company based in the Central European region - Estonia. Since 2011, we have been helping businesses get unique digital solutions for their businesses of various domains, including Healthcare software development services.

We provide a full cycle of software development which will allow your digital product to always stay ahead of the competition and surprise your customers with new functionality. Each of our cases is unique, and we adapt to the client's business and financial capabilities thanks to flexible cooperation models.

  • Time and material. We give a client an approximate estimation of the scope and start a project without having an exact scope of work in hand. We plan each sprint and agree on all the project details with the client. According to this approach, we can make changes even in the middle of the software development process.
  • Fixed workscope. This model implies a single-sum contract for Discovery Phase with detailed estimations, precise requirements, and strict deadlines. Fixed workscope will be an excellent choice for cases where requirements and specifications are highly predictable.
  • Dedicated team. This type of contract is the right solution for large-scale and complex projects. We agree on cooperation terms and submit the needed specialists to your project (developers, designers, project managers, etc.) They become part of your company for the duration of the project.

Our team developed and released many software solutions for healthcare organizations for this time. We want to present the latest ones.

A telemedicine appointment management system is one of the custom healthcare solutions created by the Cleveroad team. Our specialists have developed a ready-to-use medical platform that fits the customer's business model and meets the requirements of UK healthcare legislation. Developing an application for telemedicine allowed our client to create a convenient online environment to provide intuitive functionality for all system users (patients, doctors, and system administrators).

Appointment management screen

TapGP appointment management

To create a telemedicine application, our developers used React and Redux for the frontend and Node.js and MySQL for the backend. For cross-platform development, our team used Flutter. Also, our specialists integrated Twilio, Stripe, AWS SES, and Firebase.

Also, recently we’ve developed a mental health app that help people with depression. The application is available for iOS and allows users to input the mental issue they’re facing, like insomnia, anxiety, depression, and more. The app offers healthy advice, timetables, and activities. Also, users can check statistics and track their progress over time.

Mental health app

Mental health app by Cleveroad

During the development process, we’ve used Swift and Alamofire for the iOS client side. This app also has a web admin page that was developed with TypeScript and .NET Core. As for the third-parties, we’ve used Elastic Email for mailing patients and Amazon S3 as cloud storage for keeping patients’ data. If you’re interested, you can learn more in our case study.

Ready to build a telehealth app?

Our specialist will consult you and provide you with full-fledged healthcare development services

Frequently Asked Questions
How to develop a telemedicine app?

To develop a telemedicine app you have to build a feature list. Then, together with your software development companydecide on technologies and app development cost. Besides, don't forget to comply with every regulation that concerns telehealth.

What are telemedicine apps?

Telemedicine is a method of delivering healthcare services to patients remotely.

How much does it cost to develop a telemedicine app?

Telemedicine app development cost depends on a set of features you need for your software. A full-fledged telemedicine app takes around 1,500 hours of development time and costs $75,000 with a development rate of $50/hour.

What are most important features for ensuring good user experience for a telemedicine app?

The most important features for telehealth app are:

  • Profile management (both for doctors and patients)
  • Video conferencing (for remote health consultations)
  • Calendar (for arranging meetings)
  • Notifications (reminders about consultations)
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About author

Evgeniy Altynpara is a CTO and member of the Forbes Councils’ community of tech professionals. He is an expert in software development and technological entrepreneurship and has 10+years of experience in digital transformation consulting in Healthcare, FinTech, Supply Chain and Logistics

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Comments

4 comments
BP
Bonnie Pete
14.04.2021 at 08:46

Hello! thanks for sharing an informative post. It's worth reading. I have been using a couple of telemedicine apps and found Prescribery. It is HIPPA compliant and super easy to access. I would suggest you to give it a try and review if found useful!

J
Jo
06.02.2021 at 14:02

Every single word is on point. Truly informative. Expert advises. Superb content in n out. Rating it 6/5

R
Ridwakson
21.07.2020 at 12:39

Wow This is fantastic the training is really good and superb

avatar
Oleksandr Sh.
21.07.2020 at 12:49

Thanks! We're doing our best to keep our readers informed about the latest tech trends

I
Ismail
11.07.2020 at 15:35

Superb content Most comprehensive blog about telemedicine I have ever read

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Oleksandr Sh.
13.07.2020 at 13:37

Thanks, Ismail! Keep up with our blog for new posts concerning telemedicine!

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