How to develop healthcare and on-demand medical app? [Complete Guide]

If a new piece of technology does not impact the lives of people, it might not turn out to be a business success, however marvelous it maybe! The on-demand mobile application revolution has resulted in a lot of new utilities being born. It has revolutionized the way in which we look at transportation, food, and even dating.

The healthcare industry and the medical vertical have been direct recipients of the positive impacts of the on-demand revolution. There are a lot of applications that provide different medical utilities to people.

There are different utilities that can be provided by E-health applications. Some of them are:

• Diagnosis chatbots
• Geo-fencing and geolocation
• Medication alerts
• Phone to text capabilities
• Remote monitoring applications
• Medical referencing applications
• Lifestyle applications

Health apps bring about a lot of advantages. With doctor on-demand apps, doctors and nurses can coordinate with patients to get information on the diagnosis, medication, and even the follow-up process.

A healthcare app brings the greatest advantage of digitization of data. This would mean that there can be a seamless data flow from the administrators to doctors to patients. The medical records can be maintained, and they can be synchronized with the current treatment status and the assigned duties.

A lot of paperwork is automated, which means that there is a lot of time that is saved when it comes to the precious work-hours of the physician.

There is a considerable increase in the accuracy of diagnostics. This, in the long run, makes the entire landscape of medical services more dependable and accurate.

Points to remember when creating an on-demand medical app

The creators of medical applications need to keep in mind a few aspects with an uncompromising degree of accuracy.

Make the app intuitive

It is to be remembered that the users of these apps might not only be doctors and educated patients, but even the patients who belong to the lowest strata of the society, and unskilled workers in the medical industry. Therefore, the app needs to be made informative, intuitive, and interactive.

Bring in new technologies

Medical data is of immense importance, and the data of today plays an instrumental role in determining the goodness of medical care in the future. The data gathered can be used through artificial intelligence and machine learning. This can help in AI chatbots collecting necessary information and processing the conversations better.

There have also been glimpses of Interned of Medical Things (IoMT) - devices that gather medical data, and seamlessly synchronize the data-stream with alerts and notifications.

Developing medical app

There are different requirements when it comes to the medical field. However, there are a few factors that need to be taken into consideration when creating a mobile app, and these factors encompass the entire landscape of healthcare Applications irrespective of the utility they offer.

Your app should exhibit an uncompromising clarity in addressing the problem. It should be focused on providing solutions to a specific problem that the healthcare industry faces.

Your app should be able to handle clinical data input. The data should be organized and maintained relative to normal values. It is to be remembered that medical data cannot be treated like financial data.

As discussed earlier, your medical app should be an epic tome of usability. It should be designed in such a way that other applications learn from your medical app.

Essential features of a medical app

Healthcare app should be able to collect and analyze patient health information through multiple medical devices. It is always to be remembered that your app should focus on the well-being and comfort of the patient.

The app should be able to access electronic medical records, present in the schedule of doctors, and access lab results. The app should facilitate the viewing of doctor schedules, booking of appointments, changing and canceling them based on your need, and get appointment reminders. The app should also facilitate calling a doctor in case of an emergency aid being required.

The app should facilitate downloading and uploading of abstract medical information like x-rays, ultrasound scans, and MRI scans. It should also facilitate monitoring weight and height changes and statistically significant medical information like glucose and cholesterol levels.

The app should contain details of doctors like their profiles, their photos, their publications, and their records and credentials. This feature goes in line with the booking of appointments because the more credible the doctor is, the more likely your app is to attract appointments.

Addressing data privacy concerns

A dubiously essential byproduct of data digitization is the loss of security. Medical data is extremely sensitive, and it can be exploited by criminals with malicious intentions. There are laws that protect the rights of patients and the privacy of their data.

Before we look into the details of a few legal requirements that mandate ensuring the privacy and security of data, it is to be remembered that one of the greatest challenges in building healthcare applications lies in ensuring top-notch data security. On top of being a challenge, it could also be one of the biggest cost factors. However, there cannot even be an iota of compromise when it comes to protecting the data of patients.

The United States has acts like the health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA) to regulate the transmission of information between servers and it limits access to any health information that can be considered individually identifiable to any unauthorized personnel. This mandates that authentication and authorization processes need to be in place.

The European Union, on the other hand, might not have a dedicated law that governs health data privacy. However, it is covered under the purview of the GDPR (General data protection regulation) that clearly regulates what businesses can and cannot do with personal data, in addition to defining the protocol for protecting personally identifiable information.

There are laws for every geography like the United Kingdom, Canada, and even Asian countries. Therefore, it becomes mandatory for any mobile app development company that specializes in on-demand mobile applications to establish compliance with these data privacy regulations.

Conclusion

There is no question on the reliability and relevance of mobile apps for health, and all these are expected to grow by numbers in the future. The online health industry is estimated to be worth more than $289 billion in 2025. If you would like to jump into the bandwagon of the business of doctor on-demand applications, all you need to do is get in touch with an app development company and they will take care to gather your requirements and create the app for you!