Apps are all the rage. According to Forbes, as of 2021, there were nearly 9 million apps that do everything from ordering your dinner to playing games to keeping you abreast of what’s happening on social. In 2020, there were 218 billion app downloads, with the average phone containing 40 apps. Despite this, the average user spends nearly all their time between 18 popular apps. Most apps are free or sold for a minimal expense, commonly $0.99. Few users install a medical app on their phone, although that number is growing as more users want to track their sleep, oxygen saturation, heart rate, and other indicators of health. In 202, the market for medical apps was $2 billion, but experts expect that to grow 10 fold to over $20 billion by 2027 — just 6 years from now. If you operate in the medical space, the question now becomes, “why not build a medical app to take advantage of this massive growth? Well, the answer is somewhat complicated by the very nature of the medical world where enhanced privacy protections place a serious need for security on any mobile device used to collect personal information from patients.
But, all is not lost. If you ever considered building a medical app, here are some basics to consider.
Building a medical app
Downloading a new app to your phone seems easy but it represents tradeoffs between the anticipated value of the app, the learning curve to get the most from the app, and the limited storage capacity on your phone. Remember that the average user spends most of their time on just 19 of the 40 apps downloaded to their device. That means you have the double hurdle of gaining downloads AND gaining traction so users actually employ the app. That’s a high bar.
Hence, once you build the app, you still need to dedicate resources to marketing and constantly updating the app. Unless your medical app fulfills a common need for some segment of patients, you’ll fight an uphill battle gaining downloads.
Using a knowledgeable partner, such as Aimprosoft, helps in the preparation of a medical application that’s successful. Their blog section contains many articles designed to help you learn how to create a medical app. And here, we explain some of these in a more abbreviated version. Here we go.
1. Know Your Audiences
When building any product, you must understand your market, the problems they face (consumers buy solutions, not products) what products exist in the marketplace, gaps between what consumers want and what products provide, and, maybe most important, what you can effectively contribute toward filling that page. In the medical world, you face additional challenges due to the sensitive nature of the data you must collect to provide value to users and fear that this data might fall into the wrong hands.
Building a marketing plan for your medical app is the first task you must understand and that builds on your understanding of the audience and their demands. Suppose, if you are preparing a telehealthcare platform to connect consumers with medical professionals. Ensure you have the technical skills to understand patients and doctors, including their technical preferences and needs, as well as the ability to build an app for both Android and iOS. Your objective is to create a trustworthy application. A suitable way to prepare this application is to ensure that it fulfills the audiences’ demands.
Some medical apps are designed primarily to make life easy for physicians and other healthcare professionals while others serve patient needs. Still other medical apps act as a communication conduit linking patients and medical staff. Know who your market is and how they’ll use your app before writing the first line of code.
Examples of the tasks performed by existing medical apps include:
- patient monitoring, such as tracking heart rate or oxygen levels
- advice
- appointment scheduling and reminders
- professional networking for medical staff
2. Prepare a users guide to your medical app
When you make a healthcare app, preparing a user guide is essential. Often, users struggle to understand the user interface of your app and need some guidance to get value from the app. Step-by-step instructions help improve understanding and resolving several issues. This guide shouldn’t waste the time of medical staff and should speed up the entire process that might otherwise consume a lot of time, ensuring users quickly uninstall your app.
A visual guide or video works best in guiding users versus a printed or digital guide containing mostly text.
3. Design matters
The design of the interface is another parameter to build into your project, as simplicity matters a lot. In the health (mobile health) app development, a simple design attracts attention, so consider the design of other apps used by your target market to mimic their layout as much as possible to make the app easier to use. An interface that’s simple and intuitive both supports download and usage goals. While developing an application, the color scheme is another aspect you should consider
4. HIPAA compliance
As mentioned, creating a medical app faces certain challenges, both due to privacy concerns and the requirements that your device comply with HIPAA regulations. Understanding the HIPAA regulations is required to keep you out of legal trouble and to ensure users feel comfortable providing private information. Once you understand the rules and regulations surrounding HIPAA compliance, you can design a medical app successfully.
5. Testing app functionality and security
When you build a medical app, a developer must ensure the app performs as expected through thorough testing. Testing the application’s functionality includes usability testing under various conditions, data confidentiality, and stability, among other tests of both the user interface and backend actions. Often, prototyping proceeds actual coding to provide testing of the app’s functionality. The prototype is then tested with prospective users to ensure a simple, functional interface. This saves a lot of time and money often wasted by building the app without such preliminary steps.
6. Functional communication portals
Are you planning to include communication portals in your application? Communication portals are a way through which medical professionals, doctors, and other individuals can speak to patients directly, such as for communicating test results. While including communication portals is a great feature when building a medical app, make sure that the individual’s information remains secure and private.
Final Words
With the above pointers, you can now go ahead and follow the steps for how to make a medical app. Understanding all requirements helps in preparing an application that serves the purpose. If required, you can approach the top company that has the expertise in designing the application. Remember that the application you create must have all the necessary features; otherwise, no one would prefer using it. Well, you must not waste time now and start with the preparation process.
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