How to Build A Telemedicine App in 2024?
Published On December 7th, 2023 Communication
“Who could deny the fact that telemedicine or much-called telehealth apps are the future of the healthcare industry.”
Understanding that there is a real benefit in opting for telehealth app technology, the growth in this field is meteoric, especially after the pandemic hit us hard in the year 2020. A recent Statista is proof of the saying, which says that the telemedicine market will grow by nearly 439 billion USD by the year 2030.
Seems to be quite high is it not, with the breakneck speed at which this sector is evolving, many businesses are getting their product architected to support this feature on their application. Many others are buying healthcare APIs to stand against the odds in the competition.
Therefore, in the article below let us consider how beneficial the app could be for patients & physicians, and the tech stacks for a quick implementation.
Table of Contents
Before anything, What is a Telemedicine App?
The term telemedicine is defined as electronic information and telecommunication technologies that support long-distance clinical health care, professional and patient health-related education, health administration, and public health.
And a telemedicine app is the way of doing all the above in digital format via video calling or conferencing and instant messaging modes. To be precise, telehealth has numerous benefits for everyone, be it the patient, staff, or doctor.
Our next topic is, the benefits part. And yah, if you wish to learn the pros & cons of Telemedicine in healthcare, check this article out.
Telemedicine App Development Benefits For Both Doctors & Patients
While talking about the benefits of telehealth apps, it can resemble counting stars in the sky as they go so limitless. From improved patient engagement to managing risks of misdiagnosis to enhanced patient alerts to managing data wisely, there are innumerable benefits for both doctors and patients.
Another report shows that over 41% of Americans are telehealth app users mainly because they were able to speak to any provider by sitting in the comfort of their home.
Here’s a detailed list of the app benefits:
| For Patients | For Doctors |
|---|---|
| Improved healthcare accessibility: Because of real-time communication, healthcare has been made accessible to everyone at all times. | Improved security: Businesses are staying in compliance with HIPAA regulatory acts to safeguard patients records. |
| Reduced cost: From in-person visit fees to additional treatment bills, the telehealth apps made it cost-efficient | Easy access to patient-care: Virtual care has helped doctors to diagnose patients anywhere they reside at their comfort. |
| Best care for all: There is no medical discrimination & doctors attend to all patients virtually irrespective of their medical condition. | Increases staff flexibility: Healthcare apps have made patients aware of the doctors and nurses available without having to wait for diagnosis. |
With benefits in hand, let us next dive deep into the features to include in any healthcare app to make it the best telehealth messaging platform in the minds of users.
What are the must-have features of a telemedicine app?
Based on the convenience of scheduling and consultation, and fostering proper virtual care for patients, the below-mentioned features are a must while developing any telemedicine app.
Here, we have divided the features into basic ones that exist in all apps and advanced traits that make any app stand apart.
Basic Features:
- User Profile: A complete info about the patient is obtained in this section, like their name, address, age, gender, allergies if any, and other medical histories for later diagnosis.
- Doctor Profile: Going with the name, it is the complete profile of the doctor from their names to designation to masteries in fields if any. With this detail, patients can view the profiles and book appointments based on their availability.
- Geolocation: Also known by many as location tracking, helps patients to identify the nearest pharmacies and clinics available via Google Maps.
- Communication Modes: This feature is crucial in any telecommunication app and including features like group calling, 1-to-1 single chats, in-app chat messaging, and video conferencing can boost the app interaction.
- EMR: Integration of electronic medical records into any healthcare app allows doctors to check the latest updates on a patient’s medical records for future checkups and screenings.
- RPM: Remote Patient Monitoring is widely used by healthcare providers to monitor people’s health status, especially the elderly who are not able to carry medical manipulations on their own.
- Symptom Checker: Without the need for a doctor’s visit or face-to-face consultations, patients can just enter their symptoms and get answers to their questions. Based on this data, patients can communicate with the doctor.
- Prescription Tracker: Some telehealth apps send reminders to patients to take medicines as part of their treatment process. This is usually achieved through push notifications.
Advanced Features:
Whether it is a wellness app or a HIPAA-compliant chat API app, apart from their key features they must need some additional features that can make it unique.
- In-App Chats: If given the option for patients to virtually connect with doctors over one-to-one chats, group chats, group video calls, or conference calls, they can feel a lot trustable and real-time for discussing their medical records.
- Multi-Platform Compatibility: Some users may not wish to connect via smartphones, so make sure that your app is compatible across different platforms, browsers, and devices.
- Chat Moderations: If there are any messages, calls, or images that seem to hamper the integrity of chat apps, moderation tools can be integrated for utmost prevention and credibility.
- Screen & File Sharing: These collaboration features can help patients instantly share their medical records and discuss treatment methods.
Now that we got to know what features to include in any chat app, let us look at how we can easily build one.
What Tech Stacks to focus on for telehealth application development?
For any app to reach out at its best, it has to be unique in its appearance, design, adaptability, and capability. Thus, the tech stack plays a major role behind the screen.
Let’s have a look at the most suitable and reliable technological stacks that are used in the telemedicine app.
- Front-end development – React Native, React JS, Vue JS, and NextJS (top frameworks), Swift, Kotlin, Java
- Deployment – Netlify, Vercel and AWS S3
- Design and prototyping – Ant Design and Bootstrap
- Back-end development – NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, NestJS or ExpressJS
- Flexible search function – Elastic search and Algolia
- Geolocation & GPS tracking – Google Maps
- Cloud-based messaging – Firebase Cloud
How To Develop A Telemedicine App In Quick Easy Steps?
Before planning for creating a telemedicine app from scratch, there are a few aspects to consider. Or say, a clear blueprint with a checklist that boosts the development process.
Therefore, here’s a step-by-step process or guide to creating an alluring and top-notch patient-doctor on-demand web and mobile app.
6 Simple Steps to Build a Telemedicine App
Step 1: Do a Business Analysis
This is the basic stage that will let you know what problems a developer faces and how the telehealth app can help in resolving the issue.
Step 2: Analyze Competitor’s Stories
Post detailed research on the different healthcare competitors, their user reviews, strengths and weaknesses, and other such info that can help you build a knowledgeable app.
Step 3: Plan your App Infra well ahead
After getting hold of the different research and analysis strategies, time to frame your app infrastructure. To complete this step, you must first identify the user’s pain points and budget.
Step 4: Design the best User Interface
Both UX/UI designs are vital strands of developing your application. An easy interface and navigation are always liked by patients. Thus, make sure to include easy bookings and payments.
Step 5: Managing different projects
Hire a dedicated project manager to look forth all the development tasks and stages that include:
- Early planning, team formation, setting project deadlines, and more.
- Using different tech stacks for designing core features.
- Looking after testing and QA phases for fully functional product dispatch.
Step 6: Optimizing marketing channels
Upon successful development of the project, the next thing is to launch it in the market and find channels for its promotion. Additionally, one must not miss the fact that any app requires timely maintenance and user reviews for product upgrades.
So, these are the steps one must make a note of to build a successful healthcare app. But, this approach can seem to be time-consuming and may require a lot of effort.
Thus, buying a chat API or a healthcare API to integrate functionalities into your application can do wonders. To find the best one in the market, all you are required to do is get answers to the below questions.
- How many years of market expertise does the API solution provider have?
- What are their outstanding features and specialties?
- How much does it cost to implement telehealth?
- Will the chat APIs be HIPAA compliant?
- Will they be secure and scalable?
That’s it!
Contus MirrorFly – A Call For All Your Telehealth Solutions
As would one know, Contus MirrorFly is an exceptional API solution provider of video, voice, and chat capabilities with over 150+ unique features and additional exquisites like unmatched scalability, military-grade security, and low-latency conversations.
With over a decade of experience in this field and having powered billions of conversations to date, they offer telemedicine chat integration at the lowest cost ever. Both SaaS and SaaP plans make it a hit in the developer community.
With these, they are also known for:
- Self-hosted chat solutions
- HIPAA Compliant chat and GDPR-compatible chats
- High-end scalability
- Sheer customizations
- Read-made UI kits
- E2E security and other protocols
What Say? Ready for Telemedicine Chat Integration?
Telemedicine apps have truly improved the lives of both patients and doctors in the best way possible, by helping them connect in their comfort and discuss diagnoses with peer physicians.
Therefore, a telehealth app has become a mandate in the healthcare sector just because of its growing importance and benefits. A wise option would be using a chat API provider like MirrorFly to integrate chat functionalities and get your app running in less than 30 minutes.
However, if you wish to build your chat application with us, we come as white-label solutions as well.
Frequently Asked Question
Which tech stack is used to build telemedicine apps?
As a wrong choice of the technology stack is known to impact the delivery time of a product, many telemedicine app developers highly prefer front-end development languages like React Native, React JS, Swift, Kotlin, and Java. And, NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, NestJS or ExpressJS as back-end stacks.
To build the tech stack of a telemedicine app, you’ll need a chat client and server along with communication protocols like XMPP, WebRTC and Websockets. Apart from these, the app can be built with front-end development languages like React Native, React JS, Swift, Kotlin, and Java and back-end languages like NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, NestJS or ExpressJS.
Which APIs are best for building Telemedicine apps in 2024?
Some of the top telemedicine API providers in the market that are known for rich features, robust security, and great efficiency are Mirrorfly, Chironhealth, Eligible, Human, DrChrono, and others. Also, please ensure that the API you choose must meet high-end requirements like compatibility, easy integration, and security.Â
How does a telehealth app improve a doctor’s business?
There are a lot of benefits of telemedicine app development for doctors like:
– Doctors can alleviate the stress of managing paperwork and administrative tasks.Â
– With telemedicine apps, doctors will be able to pull up patients’ records and have track of their medical history.
– Healthcare apps minimize the operations cost thereby offering seamless interactions and generating more ROI.
What are the best practices in building a telemedicine app?
Before developing a telemedicine app, there are few crucial steps to consider like, learning the guidelines and telehealth-related regulations, drafting a neat app development plan, choosing the right tech stack and platform, focusing on UI/UX, testing for bugs, and finally broadcasting via influencers.
Alex Sam is a mobility, IoT & chat app specialist and I would like to spend most of my time in reading and analyzing the latest happenings in the technology and how they fit into our daily lives. I always endeavor to identify more ideas and concepts, and develop user-friendly apps through leveraging technology.
Great Content! Totally agree that Telemedicine apps are highly beneficial for patients. Thanks for sharing useful content.
I am glad that you liked my post. Yes! I do accept that today telemedicine apps are contributing a lot in modern digital healthcare industry that too when we are facing the consequences of pandemic. However, your words are really encouraging me to get you more informative post in further run. Thank you!
Need alternative for live video call api and sdk to create my telemedicine app
Hello Adam, I am glad that you are interested in our real-time communication API and SDK for your telemedicine app. Of course, you will be pleased for choosing our solution as an alternative for your live video calling app. Brief about our video calling solution, its 100% customizable with over 150 + chat, voice and video calling features that can be integrated into any iOS, Android and web app easily. Moreover, we do offer additional custom features for your app as per your business needs. So, feel free to contact our team to set an appointment to proceed further. Happy to assist you. Thank You.
I want to run a testing for web application for my healthcare messaging solution which comes with hipaa
Sure Marchel, you can try our demo version for your healthcare messaging app. Since, our video calling APIs and SDKs are with HIPAA compatibility, you don’t have to worry about anything for your patients privacy with medical details. Moreover, they are more flexible and too adaptable to be integrated into any pre-built or existing device. So, feel free to contact us to proceed with our demo version. Thank You.
I want a demo of build my telemedicine app with video, voice and chat features. Our version is 4.4 android version
Hello Joe, Of course you can have a try with our voice calling API and SDK demo version. To obtain that you need to contact our team to get an access to proceed further with the same. Even you can get your clarified with any of your queries too. Thank you.
Hi Team,
I have a team and i want to have a testing for video api to build a telehealth app for doctor-patient communication. Need to world-wide users with google cloud
Hello Linsha, Great to know about your telehealth app project. Brief about our video calling APIs and SDKs, they are highly flexible and scalable to count over 1 billion + concurrent user across the world, so you can be set assured about your world-wide use engagement. Our solution is with self-hosted infrastructure of both on-premises and on-cloud that you can choose as per your business needs. We do offer a trial demo version, so you can contact our team to proceed further with the same. Thank you.
Looking for a reliable chat demo for my hipaa chat app. Need to have a look at video api, chat api and voice api
Hi Deby, Good to know about your requirement and I am glad to say that our real time communication APIs and SDKs works with all – chat, voice, and video calling. As you have asked for we do provide a sample version of our solution for a better understanding. So, feel free to contact us to get the details to proceed further with our demo version. Thank You.