How to get started with your healthcare application development

Healthcare application development is the process by which an app is built for mobile devices with the intent of helping users effectively manage their medical conditions, fitness goals, hospital visits or insurance claims. This includes telemedicine, lab results reviews, prescription & appointment management and more.

Below are some types of healthcare applications which focus on different pain points while being built:

Clinical assistance apps: These apps offer EMR and EHR access, including digital imaging abilities, the review of laboratory results and patient charts, as well as symptom checks and other assistance. They continually assist practitioners in offering in-hospital or in-office diagnoses.
Scheduling and reminder apps: These apps help physicians and administrators schedule future appointments quickly and efficiently. Users receive reminders about appointments and prescription pick-ups as needed.
Telehealth and remote monitoring apps: These apps remotely transmit patient information to a provider in a different location. Practitioners and physicians are able to relay patient lifescan information, ECG viewing, and remote oxygen checks between devices.
Medical resource and education apps: These apps provide educational access to learning physicians or medical practitioners. Apps can include clinical references, study guides, educational games, or other drug-related information pertaining to their studies.
Health and lifestyle apps: These apps are typically personal in nature and often cater to a consumer market of users looking to track their personal health or fitness. Diet and fitness tracking and motivational or meditation apps fall into this category.

To go ahead with healthcare application development, one needs to take into consideration the following pointers:

Planning:

Deciding on what type of e-health app you’re going to build. Before developing, you must decide where your idea fits within the e-health space. The first step, like for anything else, is to prepare a clear and actionable plan for the application. Start by thinking about what health-problem or pain point you’re trying to solve and consider whether it can be answered with an app.

Analysis
In this stage of the process, the goal is to document all the user, software, and hardware requirements of the app. This way, one can determine what features to focus on and anticipate what problems might come up during development. For example, will your application be available in several platforms—mobile phone, tablet, and on the web?

Further, analysing on what functions will best serve user needs.Once, it is decided on what kind of app needs to be built, the next step would be to start narrowing down the general functions basis the user needs. For instance, a medical resource app might not need a dashboard that aggregates different stats, but a clinical assistance or lifestyle app might.

Here are just a few of the functions/features, users might desire:

Dashboards: Healthcare app dashboards are useful for healthcare providers to easily aggregate patient information all in one place. They improve clinical efficiency and administration.

Reporting and charting functions (analytics): Consider developing an app that accrues analytics information to conveniently review progress or monitor activity. It further decreases reporting mistakes and improves the level of care.

Payment portal: Payment portals provide an easy way for remote patients to remit payment, or for lifestyle users to purchase subscription packages or products.

Doctor profiles and geolocation: These are a quick way for prospective patients to find doctors near them, to review credentials, and, later, to use GPS to get to the clinic or medical facility where their doctor works.

Patient/user portal: Much like a dashboard, this is a patient-facing feature that allows patients to receive messages, alerts, and other reminders from their physician or mentor all in one place.

Real-time chat and video: These help patients connect with on-site physicians in case of emergency, or to discuss treatment options or diagnoses.

Further, Privacy and Compliance Research is very important and should be done when the process is started. Privacy is of the utmost importance when developing e-health apps. And unlike many other digital privacy and security concerns, healthcare apps are subject to fierce legislation in the name of patient and practitioner protection.

One needs to obtain certifications through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that ensure patient protection.

Further, it is important to decide which platforms and devices the application would support so that the next steps which are design and coding could be taken forward in accordance with the same. Any e-health device must be supported on the correct platforms and operating systems. Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches will provide users quick and instant accessibility to your app. Whereas desktop devices such as desktop computers and laptops are useful for older app users and those performing more in-depth, time-intensive research.

Design:
It is very important for a mobile application to have an accessible UI/UX Design for the users to make most of the apps. Effective user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designs are important for all e-health apps. Given the vulnerability of many users who rely on e-health apps, it is important to do implement solid development practices:

Focus on consistency when mapping out user pathways.
Spend some time considering users' possible pain points to provide a seamless experience. Imagine being a patient who must enter their medical information every couple of hours.
Minimize the number of “interaction” points for patient-users.
Deliver important information early in the user’s journey.
Maintain simple, clean, and uncomplicated graphic design.

Construction & Coding:
This is the stage where all the previous planning, analyzing, and designing efforts are implemented and executed. Using the requirements and design plan as a guideline, the development team will begin the programming and coding of the app.

By this point in the development journey, one should have established their market niche, consider which functions the users will benefit from and ensure the security and privacy through compliance and UI/UX design.

Testing:
When the app is built, one needs to make sure that it works as intended, that document requirements are met, and that it’s free of major bugs. As many know, there is not much room for error in the healthcare space—much less its applications.

It is mandatory that the app goes through a stringent security audit as well as system tests, integration tests, performance tests, user acceptance tests, quality tests, and debugging to make sure everything is in order. It is critical to ensure that the app is secure to protect the app users and all their sensitive data.

One also might want to get as much feedback as possible during this stage, so it should be considered running the app past target users by conducting a beta test. Use the positive and negative feedback gained to make iterations to the application.

The healthcare application development is an important process for both, the hospital management as well as healthcare mobile app development company. Following the guidelines is of utmost importance as there are government regulations involved in the healthcare industry. Daffodil Software is one such healthcare app development company, which complies with the health standards and regulations and builds customizable healthcare solutions as per the requirements of medical professionals.