5 Steps to Building Healthcare Apps

Is creating a healthcare app a need for you today?

The year 2022 marks a higher level of pressure among health care professionals because of the public’s quest for more advanced medical solutions to the pandemic problems.

Providing more medical support and communication among patients has become a pressing need nowadays. Because of this situation, more hospital stakeholders are opting to have innovative healthcare apps to address the urgent needs of the public.

If you are a hospital owner, a medical practitioner, or a clinic administrator, you have experienced how tough it is to address all of the demands of the patients and the staff. Attending to all of their concerns can be overwhelming, and the threat of acquiring the Covid-19 virus adds stress to everyone.

Building a healthcare application is a practical decision to limit the face-to-face interaction among hospital staff and patients. A healthcare app allows you to schedule doctors and patients for online consultations and deliver prescriptions via courier or digital.

Also, an A.I.-powered healthcare application in your smartphone allows you to connect smart devices and enable checks for blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar level. Healthcare app development makes it possible for medical professionals and patients to communicate virtually and combat the Covid-19 virus.

Advanced smart health devices and apps allow you to have ECG heart checks and urine sample analyses. For seniors, especially post-stroke patients, there are available healthcare apps that monitor movement and routine physical therapy exercises via sensors. Physical therapists, caregivers, family members, and patients can take advantage of these apps and continue the exercises even during lockdowns.

Some apps include monitoring for respiration and sleep cycle. These apps work best for hypertension, diabetes, heart ailment, and immune system diseases. These healthcare technologies allow 24/7 monitoring and provide nurses and doctors with data that can help in assisting and treating patients.

The development of artificial intelligence and machine learning will boost the efficiency of smart devices and perform more complex tasks such as advanced computer vision (for the doctors to examine the patient online clearly). Additionally, improve radiologic services (computer-assisted X-rays) and robots to help in sanitizing rooms of Covid-19 patients.

If you are thinking seriously about developing a healthcare application, here is an overview of how software developers do it. Then, read these five steps in building a healthcare app to walk through the development process.

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1. Setting Clear Goals

In this stage, you will meet with your chosen software development team and discuss the goals you want to achieve for the app project. Next, you will have to delineate the specific needs in your hospital or clinic and write down the target outcomes. 

Have a clear purpose statement at the beginning, as this will serve as the anchor throughout the development phases. Having a vision for the healthcare app helps everyone understand the rationale for the project and motivates the team to do their best. 

2. Identifying Software and Hardware Requirements

After identifying the healthcare app's goal, purpose, and vision, the software developers will analyze and research the tools needed to accomplish the objectives. 

Depending on the complexity of the features, the software app developers will scout for the best Application Programming Interface (API), artificial intelligence tools, plug-ins, and other devices needed to run the project.

3. Projecting the Development Project Phases

After determining the tools needed for the project, the team leader will set deadlines for each phase of development and will assign specialists to work on the front end (UI/UX interface software designer) and back end (software programming/coding) of the healthcare application. 

Other specialists may join the team, such as consultants for Information Technology and healthcare experts. The project calendar includes deadlines for each month and quarter, maximizing the project's budget through well-accomplished outputs. 

4. Working on the Development 

After setting the preliminaries, the team starts to work on their respective tasks and reports daily to the team leader to check the project's progress. If the budget is small, you can ask for a full-stack developer to work on both the programming and design of the healthcare app. 

However, you will need to adjust the project timeframe to allow the full stack developer to complete the work. If you want a healthcare app to be downloadable on both Apple and Android devices, you must add a developer and adjust the deadline to meet the platform and operating system requirements. 

If you need the healthcare app right away to help with the immediate needs in the hospital or clinic, you may opt for a pre-designed app that already contains the features you need. However, you may need to download several apps to address specific concerns in your hospital operations. 

Eventually, as your hospital grows, you will find it necessary to have a custom healthcare app to centralize and integrate all operations. In addition, having a full-powered custom healthcare app provides efficient workflow among hospital staff and interactive communication with the patients. 

5. Testing and Support

In this phase, the programmers will have to check on bugs and fix these to ensure that the user can get to his intended goal right away. The programmers will run A/B testing to see how well versions of UI/UX designs work well with the various user types. 

Specialists and consultants will provide guidance and recommendations on improving the app further. In addition, the team leader ensures that the project meets its turnover date and provides continuous technical support to assist the hospital staff during the training sessions. The technical support may continue alongside some app upgrades depending on the agreed conditions. 

These are the steps that your app will undergo during development. It is best to contact a well-rounded software company that can house all the technical needs of your hospital so that you can continue to upgrade the features of your app. Having continuous technical support ensures that you get immediate assistance when things go wrong, and there is an emergency.

Learn more about healthcare app development with Digital Authority Partners or contact us to get started!