If there’s one thing 2020 taught all of us, it’s not to take our health and life for granted. And it is this same new-born realization that will allow business owners like us to rethink digital healthcare application development for 2021.

Though it appears like the intensity of the pandemic is gradually decreasing, it’s still severe in places where it’s prominent. Countries from all economic backgrounds succumbed to the contagion, leaving several businesses and livelihoods affected. Amidst all chaos, what arrived as a saviour in our lives is mobile health or digital healthcare.

By bringing together healthcare and digital technologies, this wing helped us stay safe and healthy during the pandemic (and before) by allowing us to connect virtually with our physicians and doctors, get appropriate health insurance policies, get medicines delivered at home and more.

The mobile health sector is increasingly becoming a norm today and if you’re someone who intends to make the most of this situation and help people suffer less, this is the most ideal time to get into healthcare app development.

And that’s exactly what this write up is all about – helping you understand the ways you should look at medical app development for 2021.

So, let’s get started.

How To Approach Healthcare Mobile App Development for 2021

Data Collection and Market Research

For those of you who didn’t know, the healthcare market is estimated to value at around $3mn by the year 2025. Additionally, over 80% of the users who use digital health solutions currently have revealed that they would like to continue using their mobile health app for consultations and appointments even after the pandemic is over.

These two statistics help us understand the wave that is likely to take us to profitable shores. But these shouldn’t be the two pillars around which you base your entire business. That’s where proper market research and data compilation comes into the picture.

Before you get into developing innovative health solutions, you need to understand what your product is going to be about. Ask some questions like these:

• Does a variant of your product idea already exist in the market?
• Why should users care about a new healthcare app?
• How does your digital healthcare app intend to stand out?
• How are your competitors performing?
• What problems do users want to solve through your app?
• What is the demographics you intend to tap into?

Answers to these questions will give you a clear understanding of how your app would fare when it is actually rolled out in 2021. For this, do surveys, indulge in full-fledged market research and analysis, book appointments with health experts and consumers and get their inputs and gather as much data as possible.

Charting The Plan

Once you’re done with the data generation process, you would process them to have information. So, now you have knowledge. But at this point, you need wisdom and that only comes when you apply the knowledge in your hand to turn an intangible idea into a product that would click in the market.

When you assess the responses to the questions, you would understand market requirements, consumer behaviour, competitor volatility and more. Using all such insights, you need to lay an ideal development plan to ensure the entire process of healthcare app development unfolds seamlessly.

This detailed plan should include everything you are likely to endure during the development stage. You need to feature the challenges and risks involved, the scope of the project, the scope creep, budget, the team members required, their expertise, your tech stack, application features, time to market, go to market and more.

This will act as a map or a calendar you could keep coming back to check if progress is being made and deadlines are being respected.

Designing Your Healthcare App

One of the most crucial aspects of healthcare app development is its design. Unlike retail or entertainment apps, this is completely reliant on trust. We are dealing with life and diseases and trust is the number one factor around which the entire app needs to be designed. That’s why you need to consider the following factors when designing your digital health solutions.

• Your end users should be the top factor to initiate your design process. If your app is to be used by senior citizens, its design would be very intuitive and accommodative of technically challenged people. It should also consider people with vision problems to ensure people from all walks of life are able to seamlessly use your app.
• Maintain enough distance between icons and modules so it’s easy for your end users to swipe, select or take an ideal action.
• Never drive away from implementing the core idea and functionality of your app. It’s understandable that you would focus on implementing additional features but remember to keep coming back to the core idea behind developing your app.
• Include tutorials in the beginning to help people get on board easily.
• Incorporate voice search and text-to-speech capabilities.
• Keep the design simple and minimal. Use colour psychology to sustain trust.

Inevitable Features For Your Healthcare App

Your app's features are what help your users accomplish tasks. Be it to help patients book appointments with physicians or doctors, share and retrieve lab tests and diagnosis, order medicines online, get health insurance or more, the features that you incorporate should help them complete their preferred actions.

For a quick start, include the following features:

• Simple, one-step signup features or social sign in capabilities
• Smart and convenient search to help users get what they want instantly
• Video chat features and in-app texting capabilities
• Push notifications that contain medical information
• Payment gateways and wallets integration
• Emergency features that will allow patients to report anomalies and emergencies to doctors immediately
• Features to simplify data transmission such as health records, digital imageries, test reports, prescriptions and more

The Tech Stack You Need

So, we have the knowledge, the plan and the picture of how your healthcare app would look and feel. The next process in healthcare app development is setting up the tech stack required for the development.

Your tech stack determines how efficient your app development process is and how effective the final output of your app’s functionalities and features would be. Now, tech stack includes all the technological concepts, developmental frameworks, tools to be deployed, system architecture, tech infrastructure and more that are required for a smooth development process.

And if you intend to get distinct native apps developed for your innovative health solutions, you need to include the separate tech stacks for each as well. The same goes for when you decide to develop a website, a progressive app or others for your idea.

From a technology perspective, you should also include the concepts you intend to apply for the development such as artificial intelligence, chatbots, blockchain, machine learning, voice recognition or natural language processing and more.

Wrapping Up

So, these were the essential approaches to designing a healthcare app for 2021. With the future being completely digital, it’s vital to get started today. And as far as healthcare is concerned, we are only looking at more intense and feature-rich technologies being deployed to improve patient care and health.

That’s why we suggest you to get started with a company that has been into healthcare mobile app development; for years. We recommend you get in touch with us. We are pioneers in this sector and we would help you get the best healthcare app for your idea.

Apart from the approaches we’ve mentioned here, we also take care of other crucial aspects like app testing and optimization, automation, app maintenance, legalities and compliances, cybersecurity and more to provide you an extensive airtight solution.

Reach out to us today.