A Step-by-Step Guide to Develop a Telemedicine App: Types, Features, Costs, Technology Stack

If put in a lay person’s language, Telemedicine is nothing but the practice to provide communication between patients and doctors using advanced communication tools. Statista estimated that Telemedicine App Development will be a $40 billion industry by 2021. Considering the fact that healthcare cannot be ignored or risked, healthcare providers are constantly searching for telemedicine app developments that would let them provide medical aid to the growing number of patients.

If you wish to develop a telemedicine app, you have stumbled across the right site. Let us see what the absolute requirements of a telemedicine app development are.

Types of Telemedicine Apps

Real-Time Interaction

Healthcare providers can interact with their patients in real-time via video conferencing. The telemedicine app for real-time interaction lets doctors as well as their patients see and hear each other.

Remote Monitoring

Telemedicine apps also can be used for administration of the patients who are at high risk and let healthcare providers invigilate their patient’s activities and signs remotely with the help of wearable devices and IoT enabled health sensors.

Store and Forward

Store and forward telemedicine apps let healthcare professionals share their patient’s medical history, their information, and blood tests with a radiologist, a physician, or any other healthcare professional.

Reasons why Telemedicine Apps are becoming so popular

Convenience

A study done by Cisco suggests that over 75% of patients choose telehealth services by a healthcare professional over in-person meets. Waiting in a long queue after driving to a hospital is not a convenient way to seek advice from a doctor, especially when you are down with the illness. A telemedicine app allows patients to get health advice from their respective specialists without them having to wait in long queues. They can just schedule a remote appointment with their doctor and get in touch with them at their earliest convenience. A telemedicine app also helps in starting the treatment efficiently and quickly.

Medical Record Keeping

With the help of telemedicine apps, a doctor as well as the patient can view their records quickly and conveniently. It overpowers the interoperability issue by letting several doctors have access to the patient’s past health records. So now the doctors can give their patients much better treatment by looking at their medical history. They do not need to keep paper-based medical files anymore either.

Time Management of Healthcare Provider

Now healthcare providers are able to administer their tasks more effectively. As doctors are able to give treatment to their patients and offer consultation from their home or office, they can consult more than just one patient at the same time. Telemedicine apps for doctors can help with a better work-life balance.

Unified Patient Monitoring and Management System

Telemedicine app development can help patients keep up with their prescriptions, follow-up consultations, and more.

Most Considering Telemedicine Apps Features

If you are planning to develop a telemedicine app, you first need to consider the users of this app:

  1. Patients
  2. Doctors
  3. Lab Technicians
  4. Admin

After this, you need to figure out the features every dashboard requires for a functional telemedicine app development.

1) Patient Dashboard

Patient Profile

Patients can create a profile on a telemedicine app by filling in their important information, like name, email address, phone number, gender, age, medical history, problems they might be suffering from, and everything that is required to start the treatment. They are able to make changes in their profile information whenever they want.

Find a Doctor

This feature helps patients find doctors using filters like specialty, language, insurance provider, and gender. It will allow patients to find a healthcare provider that meets their needs.

Appointment Scheduling

Patients are able to go through a doctor’s profile on a telemedicine app and schedule an appointment with the doctor by looking if they are free via the calendar in the app.

Real-Time Visits

Patients are able to have one on one interaction with the doctors in real-time via video conferencing or audio calling. It should be high in quality and smooth for doctors to examine patients to recognize the symptoms of the disease.

Payment Gateway

Patients are able to pay online for their real-time visits. A telemedicine app development should offer multiple payment gateways so that patients have the freedom to choose what is convenient to them.

Book Lab Test

Patients are able to book lab tests suggested by their doctor on the telemedicine app.

2) Doctor Dashboard

Doctor Profile

Doctors are able to create their profile on the telemedicine app for doctors so that patients can go through their backgrounds, hospital affiliation, and the doctor’s certifications.

Appointment Schedule Management

Doctors are able to change their schedules and their availability. They are able to accept or reject an appointment.

View EMR

Doctors are able to view their patients’ medical records and lab results in real-time on the telemedicine app development.

Provide Digital Prescription

The telemedicine app should empower doctors to prescribe treatment and medicine in the app. Patients are able to buy medicines using digital prescriptions provided by the doctor. Patients should also be able to get other health services recommended by their doctor like lab tests via the app.

Calls

With the help of this feature, doctors are able to connect with their patients through video conferencing. It allows doctors to not only diagnose a patient's symptoms but also give effective treatment.

Video Session Recording

Doctors are able to record audio and video consultation sessions to manage the quality of their treatment. This feature can help protect the doctors as well as the patients at the time of any dispute.

3) Lab Technician Dashboard

Lab Technician Profile

Lab technicians are able to create profiles by giving essential information like their certifications, background details, and license.

View Requests

Lab technicians are able to view requests they get from patients and add them to their schedule or calendar.

Assign Tasks to Lab Professionals

Lab technicians are able to assign tasks to lab professionals based on test requests they get from patients.

Share Reports with Doctors and Patients

Lab technicians are able to share lab results with both doctors and patients through the telemedicine app.

4) Admin Dashboard

Users

Admin is able to manage all the users from telemedicine apps. Along with this, they are able to edit or remove the existing information of the users with their consent.

Documentation

Admin is able to access all the documents that are related to a patient’s medical records, lab test reports, or insurance documents. This feature can help an admin research a large patient population effectively.

Finances

Admin is able to manage the money flow effectively using this feature. It will help admin track expenses and income efficiently.

Cost of Developing a Telemedicine App

  • The cost of developing a telemedicine app depends on various factors:
  • The location where you want to launch your app,
  • The type of telemedicine app you want to develop,
  • The features you integrate into the app, how many platforms you decide to launch it on,
  • The size of your app; and last but not the least,
  • What technology stack you decide to stick with.

Tools & Technology used in Telemedicine App Development

Platform Technology/Tools
App Designing Adobe Photoshop or Canvas Flips
iOS App Development Swift/Objective C, Mac OS, iPhone SDK
Android App Development Java, JDK, SQLite
Backend Panel PHP and MySQL
Video Calling API Twilio

A basic telemedicine app development with basic features may range from $10,000 to $15,000.

Although to get the exact cost of developing a telemedicine app, make a list of your requirements and get in touch with a reliable on-demand app development company like Cypherox.

All things said, telemedicine app development is the future of the health industry. We have witnessed this during the coronavirus outbreak. A telemedicine app development needs complete attention to detail. Besides identifying the features that are to be integrated in your app and technologies you can use, you need to make sure your Telemedicine app adheres to the legislation in your chosen region.

Contact

If you are looking for a reliable technology partner to build your telemedicine app development, rest assured, you can trust Cypherox with your app requirements, as we believe nothing is ever going to be more important than encouraging good health and breeding success for your healthcare institute. Our exceptionally talented app developers can help you develop a telemedicine app of any kind, a small MVP or an enterprise-grade solution that can accommodate your current healthcare system without problems.