mHealth is growing rapidly since hospital and healthcare providers are extensively embracing mobile technologies in their work. Not only mobile apps are convenient, but they also help to provide more high-quality and faster treatment to patients. There are several reasons why medical app development services are in high demand today. On the one hand, medical apps help to monitor patients’ conditions 24/7 which is of significant importance for those who have chronic illnesses. However not only healthcare providers are interested in their patients’ health. Nowadays more and more people want to stay healthy and keep fit. In addition, many employers, such as big companies, want their employees to be in good shape so that they could perform their work better and rely less on the provided medical insurance.
Popular mHealth trends
One of the latest medical trends is telemedicine. The use of telecommunication technologies allows healthcare providers to overcome distance and deliver medicine to patients who live in rural communities. Using a medical app a patient can receive the consultation from a doctor without an in-person visit.
Another factor of the rapid medical app development was the invention of wearable devices. Fitness tracker appeared to be a perfect tool to monitor a person’s everyday activity like counting steps made per day, calories and the heartbeat. Wearable devices are also widely used in hospitals as they allow doctors to monitor the condition of patients with diabetes, asthma or heart disease day-and-night even if they are not staying in the hospital.
Types of medical apps
Today more and more healthcare providers starting from large medical centers and ending with private doctors, want to have a medical app of their own. This explains the appearance of a large number of health and medtech startups in the past few years. Some of them managed to succeed fast by providing on-demand services to their end users. This end user can be a doctor, a patient, a medical institution. There are also apps that meet the basic users’ needs such as activity tracking or chronic disease monitoring. The last one fall into the category of general healthcare apps that helps people to manage their health by themselves. This includes fitness apps, women’s health apps, apps that help to manage chronic conditions and that remind patients to take their medication.
Another category of apps is solely dedicated to medical professionals. They include medical reference apps, educational apps, apps that allow doctors to monitor and manage their base of patients, and also provide remote consultations and communication with other practitioners.
How to build a medical app
So if you made up your mind to join the mHealth market, you will need to follow some basic steps. Firstly, search for the company of developers specialized in medical app development. It’s better to choose the team that can provide a full development cycle:
- Business analysis
- Development
- Design
- QA
- After-release maintenance
The cost of medical mobile app development to a large extent depends on the complexity of the implemented features. Besides the geographic location of the contracting development company also matters. Usually, the highest rates are charged by developers from the USA and Western Europe. Companies in Eastern Europe, on the contrary, have lower rates but the same level of professionalism.