Development of mHealth Applications: Costs, Features, and Challenges

mHealth is a widely used application in the market nowadays. As the demand for the health sector keeps increasing, the usage of mobile health apps is in high demand. The main steps of developing a mHealth app are discovery, specification requirements, engineering and design, development, testing, and ongoing support. Each of these stages consists of a broader view of insight.

In this guide, we will focus on the following four main guidelines:

• What are the types of Healthcare apps?
• What are the features of Healthcare App Development features?
• What are the challenges faced in the mHealth Sector?
• What is the cost of a mHealth app?

Let’s get started!

What are the types of Healthcare apps?

There are two types of Healthcare applications as the applications are essential for the Healthcare providers and the Patients separately.

First, let’s shed light on the Healthcare apps essential for Healthcare providers as follows:

• Appointment and Hospital management apps
• Patient performance monitoring apps
• Reference and database apps
• EHR solutions

Next, let’s check out the apps designed specifically for patients. The following are the key apps designed for patients:

• Healthcare monitoring and management apps
• Nutrition management apps
• Education and self-diagnosis apps
• Mental wellness management apps
• Women health apps
• Reminder apps

Though there is a diverse range of applications, common features are falling under most of these applications. Next, let’s check out some common features.

What are the features of Healthcare App Development features?

The following are the pivotal common features in healthcare app development:

• Appointment
• Scheduling
• Reminders
• Health tracking
• Geolocation
• Patient information management
• Payment gateway
• Realtime chat options
• Ratings and Reviews
• Cloud integration
• Reporting and Analytics

The appointment allows you to schedule appointments for a specific doctor. Here, the patients can schedule their appointments as per their requirements at any time. So, that the patients aren’t stuck in a waiting room or any queues.

Scheduling allows you to schedule the medicine consumption, tests, and amount of liquid required. Just like maintaining a reminder, the scheduling system would remind the clients to take their medicine and take their tests on time.

A health tracking system would monitor the functionality of the patients. It keeps an in-depth eye on the conditions, blood pressure, calorie rate, pulse rate, improvements, and many more! It is a worthwhile tracking system from the patient’s point of view.

Geolocation is a map feature available on most maps. If there are no other doctors in the nearby locations, you can use the Geolocation feature to find out the doctors and hospitals closest to your current location. This is very helpful in an emergency.

Patient information management handles the details of the patients systematically. Generally, it consists of the last access information to the app, the patient’s medical history, past reports and status, prescriptions, the consulted doctors, and many more in chronological order.

The payment gateway is the key feature of the healthcare application. It allows you to pay through debit, credit, and other third-party gateways to obtain their services. This is a method of income generation for app investors as well.

Real-time chat options allow you to chat with the doctor or any reliable person to seek online medicine apps. Through this option, real-time texts, video calls, and voice calls are communicated over the network.

Ratings and Reviews pave the way for judging a doctor or a hospital based on client reviews. So that only the most efficient people could survive in the market. This helps to build a strong foundation for doctors and hospitals to give the best services.

Cloud integration allows you to keep the cloud-connected to get instant data from cloud sources. It is important to make sure the data in the cloud is safe and secure as well.

Reporting and Analytics help to track the patient count, their health status, finances, and more new insights. Insights such as recurring patients and new patients would give a good track of information in the dashboard.

What are the challenges faced in the mHealth Sector?

There are three main challenges in developing a mHealth application, as follows:

• Compliance & regulations issues
• The Presence of multiple devices
• Lack of security

Compliance & regulations issues

Compliance and regulation issues are key factors in developing a mHealth application. Depending on the region, several rules and regulations should be followed.

For example, if you are launching the app in the USA, the mHealth app needs to comply with HIPAA and PHI regulations. Additionally, CCPA, NIST, and GDPR (General Data Protection) also require adhesion.

If you are launching from Canada, the PIPEDA(Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) regulations need to be followed. This applies to Canadians as well.

Next, if you’re launching the app from the United Kingdom, the regulations mentioned on the NSCS websites have to be followed.

If the app targets the European Union, then the rules should adhere to GDPR (General Data Protection) regulations.

The Presence of multiple devices

Due to the entrance of new devices into the market, it is difficult to make apps that comply with these needs. Also, the app needs to operate on multiple devices simultaneously as well. This is a very challenging concept for developers.

It is difficult to comply with all the needs as well as maintain security throughout the platform.

The interoperability among multiple devices has to be maintained accordingly.

Lack of security

Security is the other key area for the development of mHealth applications. The developers need to ensure the security of the application in all terms. This includes protecting the app from hackers, and payment issues, and securing the patients’ and doctors’ data as well. In between the scenes, there are so many security issues such as authentication and authorization that need to be regulated appropriately.

What is the cost of a mHealth app?

Generally, the cost of the application depends on the features and the complexity of the application. It also depends on the location the app is launched, the target audience, and the mHealth development company charges as well.

As per the Research 2 Guidance data, a mobile health app costs $425,000 approximately. This is for a mHealth application developed from Scratch as well.

Overall, it depends on several factors to determine a price. It can be too high or reasonable, which depends on several external and internal factors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we discussed the main types of mHealth apps available for development for patients and doctors separately. We also discussed the common features expected in mHealth app development and their purpose of functionality as well. Next, the challenges driven forth for mHealth app development are crucial due to the regulation and security factors. Finally, we briefed a general idea on the cost of development of a mHealth app development. That’s it! I hope this blog was handy to brief your knowledge on mobile Health App Developments and if you have any queries about this blog feel free to Contact us.