Things You Must Know Before Developing Telemedicine Applications: Features, Costs, And Disadvantages

Digital health practices are on the move post-pandemic. And so is the urge to develop a customized telemedicine app development for health organizations for their existing and new patients. To add more, reports found the telemedicine market is expected to grow up to $559.52 billion by 2027. Inevitably, healthcare is going online.

Doctors and patients can experience a seamless consultation process and can always keep in touch no matter from which location they get connected. You need not hire a rented working place to set up a clinic. In addition, both healthcare providers will share a powerful channel for promoting their services.

Normally, a telemedicine app development cost ranges from $40,000 to $250,000. The average price of building telehealth apps depends on different types such as store and forward, real-time interactive, and remote monitoring applications.

Why Build A Telemedicine App?

• Remote healthcare services do not need a rented working space. You can be self-employed and as an experienced doctor, you can offer your services.
• With telemedicine app features, doctors can gain freedom from working in a company and can provide services of their own.
• Overall consultation process becomes faster due to online presence and hence the costs are tremendously reduced.
• Conventional hospitals may be far from home and may take hours to commute. With telemedicine, your patients can book an appointment at a convenient time without leaving the house.
• The consultation starts right on time and there is no need to wait in the long queue of patients for hours.
• Those who live in distant and rural areas can benefit a lot from the apps and a cellular network or Wifi.
• Both self-employed doctors and employees working in hospitals or clinics can efficiently manage their time.
• The in-app schedule and push notifications will help you notify the number of appointments on a daily basis.
• Hospitals can sync data into their CRMs with the software during the telehealth app development.
• The telemedicine features provide the functionality to both the admin and the doctors
• The telehealth software can keep electronic health records (EHR) and can give access on demand.
• You can find everything about the patient’s clinical records from a single place without wasting time.
• Even patients remain updated about the changes done in their EHR details.

Features Of Telemedicine Applications

You get custom clinical provider user experiences, seamless workflows, and integrated technologies into these features.

How Cost Estimation Is Done For Building Telemedicine Apps?

Now you know significantly about the features and tools of telemedicine app development, let us know the price that is incurred to build such an app. Generally, there are two types of estimates that are made for developing a telemedicine app. One is rough and the other is detailed.

The rough estimate can be calculated into any given online cost calculator such as the Discovery phase just to get an orientation of the project price. The accuracy may vary from 75 percent to 25 percent. The estimate types are as follows:

• The general section about the preparatory works that have no change throughout the project. It contains project specification, REST architecture, and database setup
• The development section has the business logic and UI/UX columns that indicate the appropriate number of hours required to fulfill the specific part of the work
• Third-party integration is established to save the developers time and money as a doctor or healthcare service provider.
• The non-development section will address the technical writing that comprises materials related to the project at the very first stage.

Lastly, a detailed estimate is thereafter prepared with the obligatory participation of the developers and this report is completely accurate with real figures and estimations. This is based on the cost of wireframing, documentation, and other project specifications. In case any client needs some sort of readymade documentation package, the developer’s team provides a detailed estimate with break up within the shortest possible timeline.

Disadvantages Of Telemedicine Applications

There are lots of advantages as shown above for users and businesses when getting a telemedicine app. However, it has some pitfalls that you must be ready to handle. Due to the lack of strict security requirements and other limitations, entrepreneurs get discouraged from getting into this field.

• The telemedicine app deals with the patient’s records and needs compliance from several medical and regulatory bodies. These regulations are done to protect the sensitive data that floats in the app against cybersecurity threats. Below is the list of standards that telemedicine apps need to comply with due to security concerns.
• HIPAA regulations
• PIPEDA Compliance
• Data protection directive 1995/46/EC and the e-privacy directive 2002/58/EC/IEC 62304
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
• IMLC (Interstate Medical Licensure Compact)
• Prescribing regulations in a particular state
• Telemedicine regulations in particular states
• Despite the telehealth technology tools that ensure data safety, the implementation of the algorithms is only the half battle won. For providing complete protection, you need to conduct a security self-assessment and find the new challenges once a single update is done.
• Another issue that may hamper the quality of health services is the quality of users’ cameras and appliance streaming protocols. Here the video quality matters a lot because the users need to show the kind of trauma they are to the doctors. Lack of quality video leads to incorrect diagnosis and less effective treatment. So it is essential to choose a vendor who can create high video-quality telemedicine apps with video conferencing features.
• The whole telehealth niche itself is sometimes a concern. This is because remote medicine may not be able to provide the same kind of results as a conventional style does.
• When it comes to diagnosing serious health problems, remote medicine does not work.
• For reports like X-rays, comprehensive examination, ultrasounds, etc is possible only in hospitals.
• Telehealth apps are fantastic tools for maintaining medicine, however, they cannot replace conventional methods.

Choose An Expert For Your Telehealth Project

To develop a value-driven and growth-oriented Telehealth application, you must choose a vendor who can provide a full cycle of software development and can allow your digital product to stay ahead of the competition. They must be able to satisfy your patients with new functionality and should be able to create a unique platform for the users. The vendor should provide flexible development models that can fit within your budget and should fulfill all your business requirements. Hope this article helped you get clarity on some of the most important aspects of developing telehealth applications.

Being the founder of Softqube Technologies, my team and I took the opportunity to create the Click2Cure online doctor appointment application which was a value-driven healthcare application for a renowned healthcare service provider. We created this outstanding online doctor appointment booking app to perform in-clinic consultancy for patients, full-body checkups, and get lab tests done from the comfort of the patient’s home. Presently, the app is a grand success with more than 50 healthcare experts on board belonging to various healthcare streams. The app is loaded with powerpack features for the doctors as well as for the patients. We collaborated with the top clinics, labs, hospitals, radiology centers, and Ayurveda centers. We used the best technologies and the most advanced development tools to create Click2Cure methods to build this app. Get in touch with my team today and we can help you create a revolutionary Telehealth application.