Telemedicine – a New Age of Healthcare

Telemedicine is a new technology that lets medics to professionally examine, watch and treat patients at a distance using telecommunication tools. This method has become one of the most revolutionary inventions of the last decade, and is now an inseparable part of the healthcare infrastructure.

The healthcare IT market is projected to reach USD 390.7 billion by 2024 with telemedicine overtaking a quarter of this market.

How Telemedicine Works

It’s not necessary to be a doctor to experience the new technologies in medicine. People all over the world search for symptoms online, find information about drugs, order them, and even get everything delivered to their doors. But in order to get examined by a specialist and get this or that medicine prescribed, patients still have to go to hospitals and sit or even stand in long queues, where everyone’s sharing their symptoms with each other. Not on purpose, but still…

Here is why telemedicine app development comes in handy. No queues needed any longer!

Available 24/7

People postpone mainly visiting a doctor for the following two reasons: either they are too busy, or the necessary specialist is not available at the time they need. In many developing countries there are just not enough medics to help everyone on time.

Telemedicine healthcare applications solve all these problems quickly and easily: it’s a few clicks that separate you and the doctor you need to reach.

Cost-effective

Telemedicine is undoubtedly profitable, and it’s not necessary to be a brilliant business analytic to see that. What’s cheaper, to create and launch an app, or to open and maintain a whole clinic? Financial accessibility is one of the core factors that stimulate telemedicine adoption, and many entrepreneurs are now becoming successfully engaged in this type of business.

Telemedicine is beneficial for healthcare businesses with physical locations like hospitals, clinics, or medical centers. With telemedicine apps, doctors can help more patients, and medical facilities can provide better service, which results in additional source of revenue.

According to the Statista research of 2017, approximately 30% of healthcare organizations managed to cut their expenses by 20% due to telemedicine solutions, and another 42% of organizations reported saving from 5% to 19%.

Secure

Complying with all the necessary laws and regulations, mobile healthcare apps securely exchange data between doctors and patients without compromising any sensitive material.

Reduced paperwork

Telemedicine mobile apps send all the data to servers that store it and connect it to CRM databases. Thus, doctors and patients can access all conversation recordings and health recordsany time they need with the help of a telemedicine software platform, which boosts efficiency. Therefore, when a patient goes needs to be examined by other doctors, they can immediately get the access to the patient’s health history and provide help more effectively.

Want to start a telemedicine business? Here’s how:

Study the regulations

Carefully studying of the pros and cons of the industry you’re planning to enter is a must for any entrepreneur, and healthcare sector is not an exception. Look though the healthcare policies of your target region:different countries have different legislations that protect sensitive personal data like EHR. For example, in the US, HIPAA is the main act that regulates the security measures for digital healthcare records and their use. Make sure that your future telemedicine business will comply to all of them to avoid difficulties.

Work out a plan

It’s high time to watch and analyze your competitors. Clearly state the problem yourtelemedicine app aims to solve, and build a comprehensive strategy for its monetization, development and marketing. This stage lets you form expectations and defineyour budget.

Note: It’s crucial to carefully plan your marketing, monetization and business strategies before you start developing the application itself. You may turn to IT consulting and marketing research departments for professional assistance.

Choose reliable developers

Make sure that the developers you have chosen for your telemedicine app are aware of all the regional legislations, and are the security experts, as security is a priority for any telemedicine application. Shortlist some development companies and share your ideas, requirements, budget expectations and deadlines with them.

A professional development company will conduct the business analysis of your idea to work out a technical specification and offer you a detailed esteem of all the operations needed.

Deploy and launch your app

App development and release is not the final stage of planning, as you need to allocate your budget to maintenance and marketing as well. It is worth collaborating with local clinics, hospitals, individual doctors and healthcare organizations for a better outreach.

Telemedicine app development cost

The cost of telemedicine app development depends on many factors:

Web development technology
Number and complexity of features
UI/UX design complexity
Development team quote
The quantity and price of the third-party services you’re going to use in your application (e.g. Google Maps)

Note: The feature scope and dev team quote are the factors that affect the development cost the most. Development companies’ quotes are usually based on a company’s experience and location.

Telemedicine app development process:

Business analysis – technical specification and wireframes creation according to your business needs
Design – detailed mockupsincluded
Development and quality assurance – these two processes are carried on simultaneously. The duration depends on the technology stack
Security check – obligatory for telemedicine apps; includes security testing
Deployment – app releaseto the app stores and app store profiles optimization for search
Maintenance and support – bug fixing, updating, and tweaking the existing features

New technologies – new challenges

Telemedicine app development needs a lot of attention to functionality, convenience, and security. Despite being the data security experts, you and your development team have to make sure that the app complies with all the legal requirements.

Telemedicine connects doctors and patients, so features such as text and video chats are necessary to help diagnose patients as accurately as possible, and require great attention in terms of security to protect the sensitive information shared with their help.

To make the app trusted, it has to be provided with detailed information on each doctor, and to let users leave their reviews. This opportunity to share experiences eventually makes any app eventually more popular, and telemedicine apps are not an exception.

Don’t know where to start from? Our company can provide your business with a telemedicine app of any kind, from a small cross-platform MVP to a big enterprise solution that integrates your internal management system. Make sure each patient finds a right doctor through your app.

Have any question? Feel free to ask anything you’d like to know. Use telemedicine technology to your advantage – we will help you to shape your ideas into an intelligent and powerful mHealth solution.