Telemedicine App Development: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know to start a successful telehealth startup. 

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur, a product lead, or a founder, we will explore some critical design, tech, and business considerations. 

Here’s what you’ll find inside:

• Why it’s a good idea to invest in this booming sector now
• The core value propositions of telemedicine apps
• Key features that are necessary to effectively serve patient and provider needs
• A step-by-step technical build and launch process
• Budgeting development costs
• Tips for vetting and picking the right dev team

Are you ready to build the next game-changing platform? 

Let’s get started!

For first-time founders, these business startup tips can make all the difference.

Why Telemedicine Startups Are Booming Now

The current situation favors a telemedicine startup in the United States. Market trends provide a fantastic opportunity to invest.

There are two factors influencing the rising popularity of developing a telemedicine app.

1. Pandemic Fueling Demand

• Due to the COVID pandemic, the number of telemedicine users, both patients, and medical professionals, increased by 100 times.
• According to Statista, 60 to 75 percent of US adults are willing to use the telemedicine app in their daily life.
• 70% of users are entirely happy with the service offered by TM services. They intend to use these again in the foreseeable future.

When technology becomes mundane, the creation of a new product is a predictable consequence. But in a growing market, there is always room for a new product.

Changing behavioral patterns due to a pandemic is the first reason to invest in developing a telemedicine app.

Let’s look at one more.

2. Venture Investment Explosion

• By 2026, the telemedicine market’s value may increase to $175,5 billion.
• According to Data Breach market research, the telehealth sector will increase at a CAGR of 22.67%
• According to recent research, 83% of healthcare companies plan to invest in telehealth. 84% believe that they can expand their reach and cover more areas.

These statistics indicate a boom in the telemedicine application development market. And behind every boom is venture capital investment.

We conclude that this is a market that is booming due to behavioral shifts and tremendous investment potential.

We hope you agree with the statistics, too, and don’t just trust your senses. Although both are great complements when you’re thinking through the value of your future startup. 

Let’s talk more about it.

Benefits of Telemedicine Apps

There are a plethora of benefits for using and developing healthcare applications. Especially telemedicine apps both for doctors and patients. Some of the benefits are as below:

For Patients

For Doctors

All these features are a must for developing a telemedicine app, hence pay attention to these points while research how to make such kind of software.

They provide the best healthcare app design  and technical solutions to improve the value offer of a product.

Telemedicine App Development Costs

The telemedicine app development cost varies from $75,000 to $250,000.

The price depends on a number of factors including the type of application, its complexity, the kind of team, its technical level, and location.

We’ll consider 3 pricing options based on the type of application, the type of the team, and the location of the team.

As an example to calculate, let’s take the price for an MVP development that takes 1,500 development hours.

Costs by App Type

There are 3 main types of telemedicine applications: asynchronous or store-and-forward, remote monitoring, and real-time interactive.

Let’s take them as a basis to figure out the cost of developing a telemedicine application depending on the type.

Another crucial pricing factor is a type of a team.

Costs by Team Type

We’ll take a look at the most popular types of teams, assuming the telemedicine app development project is done under one roof from start to finish.

In addition to this table, you can find out or compare prices using our app development price calculator or developer salary calculator.

For trusted IT partners, explore the best IT outsourcing companies listed here.

Now, let’s find out how location affects the price of developing a telehealth app.

Costs by Team Location

We look at the most relevant regions for launching startups or outsourcing app development.

In addition, there are 2 other budget items for a startup: app marketing and app maintenance.

App marketing will cost two or three times the telemedicine app development budget. At the same time, app maintenance will cost 25% of the original development budget.

We’ve looked at pricing options. Let’s move forward to the development process of a telemedicine software product.

Building a Telemedicine Biz

Discovery Research

To provide the right telemedicine app development solution, a project discovery phase plays a crucial role. This phase includes a series of steps. And starts with collecting and analyzing all the required information about the project.

It’s a fundamental stage of project planning. It gives clarity on how to develop required features according to market and customer expectations of a telemedicine app.

With a detail-orientated research process, an SRS (System Requirements Specification) document is generated that consists of all the requirements of your application building.

From features to resources to the interface, all things are covered in a simplistic and detailed form in this document that helps in telemedicine app development.

It is implemented by following the idea validation approach. It determines the challenges, complexities, and compatibility of the project based on various observations.

This phase can take from one week to a month depending upon the complexity you require in the application.

The development essentialities you will get in this phase for a telehealth app are:

• All the specifications required for telehealth app development.
• The project goals, technology stack needed for building it, architecture, and the features of the application.
• A digital interface prototype will be developed by the telemedicine app developers.
• It will show a basic design for the application you are aiming for.
• The discovery phase will also include the MVP, how to make plans, timeline requirements, and the total budget required for the telemedicine app.

The discovery phase helps in eliminating the uncertainties of the project. As the execution of the process is deeply looked upon, thus the risk of missing the deadlines gets reduced by over 70%.

Also, the team gets an established road with a clear set of goals to work on. More importantly, this builds a great trust factor between the telemedicine app developers and the owners.

Revenue Models

There are several models that are required for how to develop a telemedicine app in order to generate revenue from the usage.

These models need to be thoroughly planned and strategized by the telemedicine app developers before they go ahead with the development process.

The basic way through which these apps earn a profit is through the fees. For instance, Doctor on Demand charges a fee of 25% from the patient for every successful appointment they make with the doctor.

The scalable business model is crucial for your product growth. Yet, the developers also should know what is your plan of monetization for a better technical design of your telemedicine app.

However, the thoughts of scalability are a major factor in general to consider, when you think about the cost of the app design stage.

It is estimated that Doctor on Demand made revenue of  12 million dollars in the previous year.

So to understand how to develop a telemedicine app and make money through it, let’s go ahead and study the models in detail.

The above-given models are the best way to ensure the right process for how to make a profitable healthcare software or telemedicine app.

Telemedicine App Technical Build

Building a telemedicine app requires good timing, right planning, and execution. Below given pointers will explain the steps of how to develop a telemedicine app.

Crafting an MVP

Certain features of a telemedicine app are self-evident, such as the live video chat functionality mentioned earlier.

Others work in the background to keep everything in harmony, yet the founder can add more sophisticated functions to improve the user experience. However, it could significantly impact the cost of MVP development.

It can be a complex task to add a feature in the current iteration that wasn’t a part of the early planning stage, especially if the team didn’t build the MVP with it in mind.

As a result, it’s critical to compile a list of all core features and functions. Whether they are simple or sophisticated, one has to do this ahead of iteration starts.

The major problem in developing efficient telemedicine software is simple. It is integrating these component elements thoughtfully and effectively.

It is to create a solution that is secure, easy to use, and massively available.

Make a list of all the features of your telemedicine app that you consider essential. These are the features that the application would not work without. In the initial development process, one must address these issues.

There is a list of required features and technical solutions, that must be in your MVP.

Sticking to the MVP strategy prevents quality problems. It also guarantees that you stay on track with the time and budget assumptions you set at the start of the project.

The telemedicine application has 3 versions of the app. So both these panels have different features according to their requirements.

So down below are given the most crucial features of both versions of the telemedicine app.

1. Features for the Patient’s Mobile App

Let us look at the features that tell us how to develop a telemedicine app and make it into a success.

2. Features for the Doctor’s Web App

There are applications for doctors in the field of telemedicine. Some services suggest using a mobile app, but we’ll look at the option of developing a healthcare website.

3. Features for the Admin’s Web App

You can control all operations throughout your app with a telemedicine admin panel.

It gives you access to your customer’s accounts and other data needed. You can also access all the monetization tools you need.

The following functionalities should be available in your admin panel:

Key Tech Stack Components

Challenges in Telehealth App Development

Telemedicine app development is not a cakewalk and demands high expertise and plenty of time to get it done. The efficient development process always makes your own telemedicine app stay one step ahead of others. 

Some of the biggest challenges are as follows:

1. Implementation of UI/UX

So when a developer is comprehending how to develop a telemedicine app, the important thing they must consider is user experience and interaction with the application interface.

2. Backend Integration

To provide the right telemedicine app development solution, a good and robust backend process must be there. It helps to create a uniform data transaction between the doctor and patient.

3. Scalability

4. Compliance with Healthcare Authorities

One of the biggest challenges to develop a telemedicine app is making it compliant with HIPAA and GDPR.

The development is only complete when the data on your telehealth app is HIPPA compliant. It prevents data breaches and makes the data exchange more reliable. 

Furthermore, it provides the needed telemedicine app development solution.

5. Data Security

The security of the data is important. Most software stores their data and access it from the cloud servers. If the backend infrastructure is weak and lacks security, it won’t take much time for hackers to breach the data. 

And that’s the main reason why coders pay so much attention to database design during telemedicine app creation.

Using the secure API frameworks and libraries, you ensure that your telemedicine app development process is safe and secure.

Launching Your Telehealth App

The launch process is initiated once your project requirements get the desired telemedicine app development solution. However this is not the end of the projects and in a way, is just the beginning.

The best approach to make your application a big success is following the Lean Startup Methodology. It aims at the approach of build, measure, and learn.

It gives useful insights on how to develop the next features effectively for your own telemedicine app.

The following approach makes your application better and more productive.

1. Once the MVP application is in the marketplace, the user feedback is collected.
2. Analyze the given feedback and work on features that have negative reviews.
3. Also, focus on the new features that are feeling missed by the users and make them with the high initial value.
4. This will build more user engagement.
5. Remember the application has made its way in the market so users will need appropriate tools for fast A/B testing.
6. Add on new features within a month’s time so that the user keeps their interest in the app and does not move to some other app.
7. Go back to step one and follow the same procedure to add more features for making the application more efficient.

All these steps ensure great efficiency while developing a telehealth application.

Our Expertise in Building Telehealth Apps

Here, at SpdLoad, we focus on delivering the best quality products for healthcare startups. We have deep expertise in building HIPAA compliance telemedicine applications.

We know the following challenges and know how to beat them in an efficient way.

Let’s take a look at our case on developing the telemedicine app from scratch.

The team composition includes:

• 1 Business Analyst
• 1 UX/UI designer
• 1 Backend developer
• 1 Frontend developer
• 1 Mobile developer
• 1 QA tester
• 1 Project Manager

And here is how we did it:

• The customer came to us without specific requirements. The task was to build a market-driven telemedicine application.
• The main challenge was to identify the target audience, find relevant pain points, and offer a valuable solution. Thus, we start the development:
  • We start with an in-depth market analysis. We generated a set of hypotheses to check in 3 fields: what pains are we gonna solve? Why would customers use our application instead of current solutions? How to make our offer better than existing?
  • Afterward, we continue to work with design researchers. It helped us to create customer personas and user journey maps. It was a start point to clearly offer the core values of our product.
  • As a result of customer development, we created a customer and market-driven set of requirements to start an MVP development.
• The main technical challenge was to make the application HIPAA compliant. Yet, our expertise helped us to manage that part in 100 development hours.

There is an estimation of the MVP we built from scratch. It includes a mobile app for patients and a desktop one for doctors and admin.

The following stage of MVP development services includes the development of:

• Mobile application and web platforms
• HIPAA Compliance
• Set of different roles: Patient, Doctor, and Administrator
• Integration of payment gateways
• Secure chat and video calls

This is the approximate time required for an MVP. However, it consists of only basic features that are a must in the app.

As we consider more complex features and technologies, the time taken gets increased. Also, the cost to develop the telemedicine app is rising.

Next Steps

Starting a telemedicine startup can be complicated, but it has tremendous potential for growth and success.

Before jumping in, it’s crucial to understand the user’s needs, technical considerations, and growth opportunities in the field. Research is critical to aligning your solution and strategy with the market.

Once you have a good understanding of the key development challenges and roadmap ahead, it’s time to take action!

If you need an experienced UX/UI design partner to help create an intuitive, user-friendly telemedicine experience, our team is here to help.

We combine empathy, research, and best practices to design telehealth platforms that address patient and provider pain points at every step.

Let’s connect and explore how human-centered design can help your app scale and stand out!

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