Healthcare App Development Cost: A Complete Breakthrough of Cost Segmentation

Blog Summary: Launch a world-class mHealth app by knowing all the aspects that influence the overall healthcare app development cost. Deep dive into specific factors such as platform type, design, features, and more that impact a medical app’s cost. Know the specific costs of developing various types of healthcare apps.

When Thomas Carlyle, a British historian and philosopher, commented on the importance of health, he was absolutely right.

He who has health has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

– Thomas Carlyle.

As a business owner in 2023, launching a healthcare app is highly propitious because ever since COVID-19 hit the streets back in 2020, the market for mHealth apps has been flourishing.

There are over 350,000 mHealth apps across different app stores today, out of which 54,546 healthcare apps are available on the Google Play Store and 41,517 healthcare apps on the Apple App Store, according to Statista.

All kinds of eHealth apps, such as telemedicine apps, fitness and wellness apps, mental health apps, nutrition planning apps, and pharmacy delivery apps, are getting great traction in the market today. Depending on what kind of app you want to launch, the healthcare app development cost will vary.

In this article, you will learn about all the factors that determine the cost of developing a healthcare app. 

Healthcare Market Overview

It is estimated that the global mHealth app market will exhibit a CAGR of 40.2% in the 2021-30 period and acquire a market volume of USD 861.40 billion by 2030.

If you notice from the above graph, such a demand for online healthcare apps was never witnessed in the pre-pandemic period. During the pandemic phase, the demand was largely for contact tracing apps, corona warning apps, etc., which were included in the fitness and health apps category.

The trend eventually evolved and today, customers highly demand various kinds of eHealth apps such as telemedicine apps, online doctor consultation apps, online therapy apps, etc.

The telemedicine market alone is projected to acquire USD 286.22 billion by 2030, which is a significant rise as compared to its market size value of USD 87.41 billion in 2022.

With advanced technologies such as AI and blockchain being integrated into modern healthcare apps, the demand for top-quality online medical solutions is further increasing.

The global market of artificial intelligence in the healthcare market space is expected to grow at a CAGR of 37% during the forecast period 2022 to 2030 and acquire more than USD 187.95 billion by 2030.

All these forecasts showcase the impact that the mHealth app market has had on consumers and the future projections.

Benefits of Building a Healthcare App

There are various stakeholders involved in the healthcare business. For instance, there are the management owners, the admins, the medical professionals (doctors and staff), and the patients. Developing healthcare apps renders great benefits for all stakeholders and helps attain massive business ROI.

Let’s take a look at the key benefits:

1. Convenience and Time Savings

In today’s era of digital revolution, consumers and service providers are both looking for convenience and time savings. A healthcare app effectively allows patients to connect with doctors seamlessly and get their needs attended to on time.

Doctors can also treat their patients effectively by scheduling appointments prior, prescribing medicine details and other dietary requirements, and managing all patient consultations.

2. Efficient Data Management

Healthcare providers have to manage a large and extensive amount of patient medical records and files without losing any of the data. An AI and blockchain-integrated healthcare mobile app safely stores all sensitive patient data while also automating data management processes. Appointment slots can be managed effectively, avoiding conflicts and patient disputes.

3. Enhance Patient Engagement

A handy mobile healthcare app acts as a lifesaver for the patient. Whether it is checking their fitness progress or measuring their vitals at any given instant, the patient has to auto-login to the app and access the necessary details. Features such as remote patient monitoring allow doctors to stay in the loop with the patient’s health symptoms and attend to critical situations on time.

4. Efficient Data Analysis

It is necessary to analyze patient behavior and symptom progress trends to work on methods that help enhance treatment quality. Healthcare apps help to record all the intrinsic patterns concerning patient health progress outcomes and measure the service value provided to patients. Specific scenarios can be studied to improve doctor-patient interactions and methods of treatment.

5. Trouble-Free Payments

Many healthcare organizations report that payment details of patients go misplaced occasionally, causing inconvenience to customers when they have to make a series of connected payments. When patients have access to a healthcare mobile app, they can make in-app payments as well as view their previous payment history. 

Types of Healthcare Applications

In today’s online market, there are mobile applications that provide all kinds of healthcare services. With the rising integration of modern tech, such as AI, IoT, and blockchain in healthcare apps, specialty services are offered to each stakeholder in the industry.

Let’s look at the different types of healthcare mobile applications:

Healthcare App for Patients

1. Virtual Doctor Consultation App

Patients can consult with healthcare professionals online at their own convenience and avoid traveling to hospitals or private clinics. They can use audio and video calls for virtual consultation. It’s particularly useful for patients who are bedridden or have chronic diseases and cannot manage frequent physical visits to the doctor.

2. Medical Education App

The general public, patients, or medical students can refer to health education apps for information on specific health symptoms and diseases. They can deep dive into all the latest medical research reports and findings and be aware of precautions to take to lead a healthy life. Patients can also get a list of treatment options, procedures, and dietary precautions to take for various ailments.

3. Fitness and Lifestyle App

With the use of wearable devices and IoT-integrated healthcare apps, users can track their fitness progress at any given time. The sensors fitted with these technologies detect critical health parameters such as heart rate, pulse, and sleep. It is like having a partner that reminds you of your fitness goals consistently. Fitness enthusiasts popularly use fitness apps like My Fitness Pal and Google Fit.

Healthcare App for Doctors

1. Medical Networking App

Healthcare professionals across the globe can now network with each other by using medical networking apps. They can share their valuable insights on various healthcare-related topics and clarify their doubts by asking for expert opinions. With real-time connection options, healthcare professionals can come over video call and discuss significant aspects revolving in the healthcare industry.

2. Appointment Management App

With technological advancement in the healthcare sector, doctors nowadays have an appointment management app that helps them schedule patient consultation time and streamline the entire appointment process. These healthcare apps ensure that patients don’t have to wait in long queues for appointments while doctors don’t overtire themselves by taking extra cases.

3. Electronic Health Record App

When dealing with hundreds of medical cases, doctors might not be able to remember each patient’s health issues. With an electronic health record app, they can manage the details of all patients regarding their disease type, health symptoms, medical history and medication. It helps doctors to quickly analyze the purpose of each patient visit and provide quality health consulting.

Healthcare App for Hospitals

1. Billing App

Medium-sized and large-sized hospitals have a heavy inflow of payments made by patients regularly. Therefore, it is necessary to have a healthcare billing app and maintain virtual receipts. They help avoid all sorts of scams and billing errors. Fraudulent activities can be easily detected as there is proper proof of billing/invoice activity for each day’s proceedings.

2. Drug Inventory Management

Healthcare facilities and hospitals must have drug inventory management apps so that medicines don’t get out of stock. The exact inventory of drugs can be maintained, with vendors receiving automatic emails when there is a shortage of a particular drug or medicine. Precise quantities of drug requirements can be auto-specified to vendors via IoT healthcare apps.

3. Service Quality Check App

By using service quality check apps, healthcare institutions can evaluate the performance of doctors and medical staff. They can also analyze the effectiveness of treatment given to the patients and the success rate of their healthcare services with the AI-generated reports of the app. This helps to scale the healthcare business and reach out to patients more effectively.

Healthcare App Development Cost Breakdown

Every healthcare business will look into minimizing the cost of mobile app development while building a customer-centric mHealth app. Various factors affect the overall healthcare app development cost. By taking into consideration each of these factors and evaluating how they contribute to the overall app development budget, a balance between quality and budget can be achieved:

1. App Design

Your healthcare app design requirements will significantly impact your application development cost. If you’re looking for an app design with custom graphic transitions and color cascades, the development cost will climb up as it requires the expertise of talented healthcare mobile app developers. UI/UX design costs will vary between USD 5,000 – and USD 12,000.

2. Platform Type

When you develop a healthcare mobile app, it is precisely built, keeping a platform in mind. According to the platform you want to launch your medical app, the costs will vary. It is also a usual practice for healthcare app development companies to develop a hybrid healthcare app in today’s scenario as they provide a larger audience reach with cost benefits.

The costs for developing a native healthcare app range between USD 350,000 – USD 400,000. In contrast, the costs can go up to USD 600,000 for the development of a hybrid healthcare app.

3. Compliance and Regulation

While it is necessary to develop an app that adheres to healthcare compliance and regulation requirements, you also need to ensure the costs don’t go high. Several of these requirements can indeed impact the overall medical app development cost.

Let’s take a look at the most important factors that determine the healthcare app development cost:

• HIPAA Compliance – All healthcare apps must meet the data protection standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• FDA Approval – Medical apps that offer services involving pharmaceuticals must be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• Patient Data Privacy – At all costs, strict emphasis must be given to protecting patient data by adhering to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Act.

4. Features

In the digital healthcare industry, the cost of developing healthcare mobile applications revolves around the features integrated into the app.

Let’s see the price range for incorporating various features individually:

• Push Notifications and Reminders – You can develop a strong bond with your patient and remind them of all their healthcare priorities on time via push notifications. To integrate a push notification system, it will cost anywhere from USD 1000 – to USD 5000. The higher price range comes for AI-integrated personalized push notifications.
• Appointment Scheduler Management –  An effective appointment scheduler is required to manage multiple appointments and send timely reminders to users to be on time for the consultation. Depending on the functionality that is incorporated in the scheduler, the costs will range from USD 1000 – to USD 2500 to develop the feature.
• Multi User Login – Users might wish to log in from the browser extension, social media sites, and through your app. So, multi-user login must be made convenient by developing robust user interfaces that accept user details. The costs of integrating a multi-user login interface vary from USD 4,000 – to USD 10,000.
• Electronic Health Record Management – Doctors and hospital admins need to manage a large number of patient files. Deploying a health record management system into your application can help manage and maintain all patient data. The costs of integrating a health record management system can vary from USD 5,000 – to USD 10,000.
• In-App Chat – When users/patients use a healthcare app, they’ll have doubts to clarify from time to time. That is why healthcare applications come with an integrated in-app chat feature these days. Doctors can also chat with their patients and get to know their health status at any time. The cost of integrating an in-app chat system in healthcare mobile applications varies from USD 5,000 – to USD 10,000.
• In-App Payment – Deploying an In-app multi-payment system into your mobile health apps will help to necessitate seamless payment transfer. Customers will be able to make payments via their preferred payment gateways easily. The costs of integrating an in-app payment system will vary from USD 3,000 – to USD 7,000.

5. Technology Stack

According to your medical app requirements, you might have to use a variety of frameworks and tech stacks to get all the features incorporated. This will require the expertise of healthcare app developers who can implement robust hybrid app development techniques. These factors will significantly impact the cost of the health app development.

When you’re integrating advanced technologies like AI and IoT, they’ll require a specific tech stack, which will also impact the costs. 

6. API Integration

For the smooth functioning of your healthcare apps, the APIs need to be integrated seamlessly. This is especially the case when you have dynamic functionality that has third-party integrations. Experienced developers can easily write robust API code and bridge them with core features.

• Hourly Charges of App Development – As a keynote, it will be fair to say that a major part of your healthcare app development cost is decided by the hourly charges. Depending on factors such as experience, skill, demographics, etc. the rates to hire a mobile application developer will differ. 

  In North American and European countries, the costs would be superiorly high compared to the hourly charges of developers in Asian countries. 

• App Maintenance and Support – Whether it is fitness apps, medical record apps, or telemedicine apps, maintenance will be required from time to time. Your healthcare app will have basic and advanced features that need to be enhanced in functionality after a time period. A major part of the maintenance costs can be avoided if you develop a robust medical app in the first place.

Several factors will determine the healthcare mobile application maintenance and support costs. Two of the prominent ones are the complexity of your application and the skill level of the IT support team.

Healthcare App Development Cost Based on Different Types

The cost can be roughly calculated also based on the type of healthcare mobile application you’re developing. Let’s look at some of the popular medical app types and the costs associated with their development:

1. Telemedicine App

The first picture that arises when you think about a healthcare app is a telemedicine app. Telemedicine is nothing but healthcare services offered by professionals in the healthcare industry via remote infrastructure. Right from virtual consultations/video calls to medicine delivery, telemedicine apps can be developed to provide a large variety of services.

Features such as appointment schedulers, video consultation portals, patient dashboards, and payment gateways are integrated into telemedicine apps. The cost to develop these mHealth apps varies from USD 30,000 – to USD 150,000.

2. Health and Wellness Tracking App

In today’s hustle and bustle culture, it is important to take a break occasionally and refresh our minds. Developing a wellness app will come in good as there is a huge market for it. Wellness apps such as Headspace and Calm have a great number of users who use them day in and around.

Wellness apps include meditation and mindfulness exercises, nutrition plans, and other producing boosting exercises. With an AI-deployed algorithm, you can send timely reminders to your app users to practice the mindfulness exercises. The costs can vary from USD 30,000 – to USD 120,000 to develop a fully functional wellness app.

3. Medical Networking App

As discussed earlier, medical networking apps are a platform for doctors and healthcare professionals to connect with each other over the Internet. These kinds of networking apps in the healthcare space help doctors to enhance their knowledge and share valuable information with other reputed professionals.

Features such as forums, networking portals, video call platforms, and content posting platforms need to be integrated into medical networking apps. Depending on the specific use case, the cost to build a medical networking mobile application can range from USD 30,000 – to USD 60,000.

4. Electronic Health Records (EHR) App

Maintaining medical records and protecting sensitive patient data is of utmost importance. With digital healthcare apps providing patients and doctors the space for online and offline interaction, it is necessary to have a system in place that ensures data security and compliance. An electronic health record app serves the purpose as we’ve seen before.

A Blockchain-based EHR app can be used to store and maintain all patient files safely, automating workflows via smart contracts. Depending on the tech stack used to build an electronic health record app, the costs of app development can range from USD 30,000 – to USD 100,000.

5. Fitness and Nutrition App

The cost of building a fitness and nutrition app can vary depending on the features that are integrated into the app. For instance, if you want to facilitate the use of wearable technology and enable users to monitor their sleep activity and heart rate levels, the costs will scale up.

Timely reminders can also be sent to users when it is time to get going about their fitness activities. Nutrition programs can be personalized for each individual based on their height, weight, and other dietary requirements. They can add their fitness goals and receive a diet plan. The cost to develop nutrition and fitness apps can vary from USD 50,000 – USD 200,000.

6. ePrescription App

When it comes to mHealth app development, ePrescription apps are becoming very popular. These apps allow doctors to prescribe the exact medicine dosage for their patients and send them over to pharmacies. The pharmaceutical stores, in turn, receive the medication list & dosage and deliver the same to the patient’s residence.

Several features, such as patient reports, customized interfaces, and doctor hand notes, need to be integrated into these kinds of apps. The cost to develop an ePrescription app ranges from USD 30,000 – USD 50,000.

Enhance your Healthcare Application Development Solutions with Moon Technolabs

Now that you have a clear idea of the cost it takes to develop various kinds of healthcare apps, it is time to decide which kind of app you want to develop. When you have a clear and established business model already in place, you can minimize your budget cut for healthcare mobile app development by following the ‘Value For Money’ tips.

There is a one-way situation to launch a world-class healthcare app. Reach out to Moon Technolabs, a leading healthcare app development company that develops customized medical apps that bring great dividends.