The Ultimate Guide: How To Build A Healthcare App

We live in times when the world has become almost fully digital. We don’t need to waste time shopping or going to the grocery store because we have an app that will solve all our requests. Of course, such digitalization is a great business model for entrepreneurs. Although every industry has its own peculiarities, the Healthcare field probably gained the most, basically due to providing a direct effect on human health, which complicates healthcare mobile application development. Therefore, it is worth discussing the building of a healthcare app separately from any other app. 

What is a healthcare app?

Healthcare or mHealth app is an app that provides functions directed to helping or influencing our health, body, or mind positively. It belongs to the family of Digital Health products. There are many variations of such apps. Some examples are Apple Health, Flo, or StressCoach app. Before wondering how to create a medical app, it is important to choose the desired category. Let’s take a look at the most common ones. 

Healthcare professional apps

Such apps are usually made for the specific needs of patients. This type includes:

Apps for medical workers and students

Wellness apps

Now, as we named the main types of healthcare apps, let’s move forward to the development process for building a health app.

Find the idea

Of course, the first of the steps to creating a healthcare app is to find the right idea. You need to decide on your niche and understand the value you want to bring to the users. Healthcare app ideas very often come up from personal experience. Therefore, if you want to join the Healthcare app community, try to analyze your and your friends/family’s daily situations. I promise you will find many healthcare problems that need to be solved. Read our guide on How to find the right app idea and test it and The future of Healthcare and Technology
articles to get inspiration. It can also be very useful to search what is getting funded to find new health app startup ideas. Moreover, this info will give you inspiration and understanding if your idea already exists.

Learn your target audience

As we mentioned, Healthcare apps have their own specifics. Therefore, it is essential to understand your target audience from the beginning as, depending on the app type, it will decide on key features that must be included in your app. Moreover, you need to dedicate more time to learning about the requirements of your users because besides value bringing, it also should be suitable for them. For example, if you decide to make the app for people with photosensitive epilepsy, you cannot make it the same way as for diabetes because they have their own requirements that you should consider before the mobile healthcare app development. A bad understanding of the target audience’s needs is one of the common reasons why medical startups fail. Therefore, this step also helps you consider whether it is worth for you to invest in a mHealth app. 

 

Choose an app type

Go back to the healthcare app types list and choose the one for your app. It is an important step because it will help you understand if you need to involve experts in app development for healthcare. For example, for a fitness app, you may need to work with doctors and fitness experts to provide users with accurate and safe workout plans. Same with dieting and health educational apps. Read our 10 Best Healthcare Apps for Patients article to start your analysis. And ones you complete those more theoretical steps, you can get ready for health mobile app development.

Find the right development team.

You have two options to make your idea real: gathering the developers for your company and having your own team or finding a great outsourcing company that will provide you with every step by itself. Of course, each option has its benefits and drawbacks. However, regardless of your choice, the team needs to have previous experience with Healthcare products because, as we mentioned, they have their own specifics that affect the development too. Furthermore, they will be able to suggest you good mobile healthcare solutions and which mistakes to avoid while developing a health app. Therefore, sometimes it is easier to work with outsourced teams because you can evaluate their experience. Watch the feedback from our clients on the Beetis app that was created by the hands of ProArea’s developers.

Choose the design

This step will be easy for you if you complete the second one thoughtfully, which is learning and analyzing your target audience. When you have all the important information about your future users, it will be easy to make fewer mistakes. Ensure to also provide an analysis of your key competitors and market analysis, as they will give you inspiration or direction in your app design. Don’t forget to read about trends in medicine!
Insight from us: if you choose the development team for creation, find one that will also provide you with UX/UI design. It will increase the development’s quality and save you money and time. Read about the services that ProArea provides its clients.

Create Healthcare app MVP

Minimum Valuable Product is a necessity of today’s development. Include in the MVP the main features of your healthcare app and share them. It will help you to get the investments for an app idea, receive feedback from first users and solve the mistakes immediately before marketing attracts the attention of your target audience. 

After you pass all those steps, your path can differ. You can go and look for the investments, completely change your idea, or just go on and make your product work perfectly. However, never forget that the main popularity and goal of mHealth apps is to bring value that changes or eases your audience’s life. Therefore, remain attentive and meticulous to details and choose the best development team to help you improve the world. 

If you want an answer to these or any related questions, do not hesitate to contact us. We will consult you and help you make your ideas happen.

 

Created by Avgustyna Loiek

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