Today, most patients prefer clinics with user-friendly sites and apps – they inspire trust and help reduce the time it takes to make appointments with doctors and fill out documents. The market for medical IT solutions is just beginning to grow, so medical app development will help to differentiate yourself from competitors and increase patient loyalty.
Why a medical center needs an app
- Loyalty. People are more likely to return to a place where they can make an appointment in one click, avoid bureaucracy, chat with a doctor and get personalized discounts.
- Analytics. You can upload information on each patient and get statistics on user activity, behavior and service evaluation. This will allow you to adjust your promotion strategy and service in time.
- Communication with patients. The service interface allows you to collect all the information about the hospital in one place; provide round-the- clock online chat for communication and PUSH-messages with reminders, news and special offers.
- Automation. The chatbot can collect a person’s health complaints, medical history and documents, and recommend tests and specialists for diagnosis. The doctor will have all the information about the person during the visit, which will shorten the consultation and make it more useful.
- Marketing. It is possible to carry out activities to increase sales: holding lotteries, organizing campaigns, giving promo-codes and discounts.
Medical app development: features
- Formation
Within medical app development, it is important to keep a balance between expertise, legal aspects and usability. Choose a laconic color scheme in calm tones; replace complicated terms with accessible ones; simplify the user’s path from filling out the form to purchasing, and support the person every step of the way. Functionality should be simple, even for people 40+ years old.
Remember that the main goal is not to replace a professional and scare them with complicated terms, but to build trust and loyalty.
- Privacy and security
When dealing with personal data, you need to consider the laws and rules of information storage. They are legally binding. Without following them, you can’t publish on the Google Play Store and Apple Store.
For people to trust you, tell them about the security of their personal documents before they fill out their personal accounts and add the ability to hide their data from staff.
Types of applications
In the service industry, services are often created for two parties: customers and performers.
Medical institutions may have separate platforms for doctors and patients.
- Specialists can see a patient’s medical history and medical records, keep a work schedule, fill out charts online, chat, and keep track of prescriptions.
- Patients can choose specialists, sign up for consultations and procedures, receive reminders, ask questions to the chatbot, and earn bonuses for payment.
What functions can be implemented during medical app development
Main
- Personal profile. Fill out a profile, upload photos, medical records, and test results.
- Family account. Add profiles of the child and close relatives.
- Make an appointment. Choose a doctor, date, and branch, reschedule or cancel a consultation.
- Make a house call to your doctor. Appoint a date, and address, describe symptoms of the disease.
- Payment for services. Refill your account, pay in installments, pay by bank card.
- Evaluations and reviews. Leave a comment after your visit to the hospital.
More
- Chat both. Sending appointment reminders, answering typical questions, technical support.
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Diary of nutrition and physical well-being, list of prescriptions and tips for prevention and treatment of diseases.
- Integration with electronic medical records. Physicians can edit their records online.
- Chat and video calls with the doctor. Remotely consult with the results of examinations and current treatment.
- Scanning medication barcodes. Track treatment progress and adjust doses.
- Bonus system. Accumulate bonuses and get loyalty discounts.
Stages of Medical app development
- Analytics
Before creating the interface, gather as much information about the company, market, and competitors as possible. Define business goals, create a portrait of the potential user, determine the general user path, and the list of available services.
Before medical app development, you should interview the customer, his audience, arrange focus groups and peer reviews to get as much information as possible in a short time. This will help to develop a clear and convenient mobile product, which will simplify the communication between doctors and patients.
- Terms of Reference
Determine team composition and developer requirements before starting medical app development, set goals, timelines, and budget. The more detailed the plan, the faster you can get started and bring the first version (MVP) to market.
Terms of reference for medical app development can include:
- Business goals.
- Project team.
- Portrait of potential users.
- Visualized user experience.
- Mandatory and optional features and services
- Ways to monetize
- Technical requirements for the interface, performance and security.
- Concept of UX/UI design.
- Stages and deadlines.
- Budget.
The description of the terms of reference helps to understand what the other party wants and how to implement it. The more detailed the ToR is, the higher the chance is to get what you really need and avoid lengthy revisions during the medical app development process.
Marketing strategy
Think through a promotion plan at the beginning, so that you can integrate the monetization elements smoothly.
You can spread the word about the project through targeted advertising, native media and blog posts, affiliate programs, and viral techniques. Write down your audience, study your competitors’ promotional methods, make your own plan, and change it depending on the circumstances.
Team organization
It includes product managers, analysts, marketers, UX\UI designers, developers, and testers. The number of people is determined by the scale, complexity of implementation, timeline, and budget.
Design and Prototype
The UX/UI designer develops the look and feel: selects brand colors, fonts, and draws push notifications, buttons, and pages. He then builds interaction logic between registration and authorization screens, information completion, profile, cart, appointment schedule, and payment.
When the design is agreed, a prototype is created – a layout in the form of main page screens. It is not yet a finished product, but it allows you to see the features in action, assess and correct errors before launching it.
Medical app development
This is writing code, working out the architecture, and logic, the client service. The mobile developers need to know the idea, the target audience and get involved in each stage to assess the viability of the ideas and implement all the functionality. Frontend programmers develop the client interface and platform logic.
Backend developers create a server to store and exchange data; select the programming language, hosting for the server, and API, and build a control system.
Testing
After the development, the prototype is handed over to testers – they check every button, push, page, and form to find bugs and flaws. Testing is needed at each stage.
Testing can take a long time, but it is better to check each page once again and fix the bugs found, than to get a wave of negative feedback after the release.
Important: such specialists should not participate in other processes – their view should be fresh and objective.
Publishing
Prepare screenshots of the service pages, promotion plan, and description. If you meet all the rules of Google Play Store and Apple App Store, in a few days, the service will be available in the marketplaces.
Medical app development: refinement and tech support
Keep your finger on the pulse in the early days of launch: monitor feedback, study the number of visits and targeted actions, the most popular features and user experience. During this time, tech support should respond quickly to feedback and fix problems, remove unnecessary features, optimize, and refine.
The creation process may seem complicated and endless, but in the hands of an experienced team everything is created quickly without losing quality, and every step is tested on real users.
This article describes the features and steps of app development. All the issues are discussed separately, so that the process is clear and suitable to the specifics of the business. The cost to build an app for the medical field will depend on the terms of reference, the amount of work and functionality.