Examine the secrets of successful software development for healthcare. From discussing industry overviews, trends, and procedures to going over the many kinds of healthcare software that are on the market, this book covers all the necessary stages. In the end, you’ll comprehend how healthcare software development enhances facilities and provides cutting-edge patient care. Improve your healthcare software initiatives to secure a more promising future for the sector.
One of the most prosperous industries in the modern world is software development.
The market is flooded with apps, and whether we like it or not, digital solutions are already a part of our daily lives. We utilize apps for a wide range of things, from learning and education to fitness and enjoyment. Consider how many applications you use daily and how much time you spend on them to get a reality check. In the same way as all of us!
And the healthcare sector is no different. It has smoothly and quickly made a transition into the app market to offer patients and medical professionals high-quality services. You can see for yourself that by using the mHealth apps to schedule appointments online, we are able to avoid the inconvenience of having to wait an hour in line for a 15-minute visit with the doctor.
The demand for software development in the healthcare industry is steadily rising every day. According to McKinsey, by 2025, technology-driven innovation will boost the healthcare sector’s yearly value to $350–410 billion.
However, in actuality, healthcare facilities have taken a while to integrate new technologies into their operations to improve efficiency. Many healthcare software solutions available today result in low user adoption rates, inadequate satisfaction rates, and lost resources that could have been utilized to expand facilities or provide advanced patient care. The reasons for this could be tight budgetary constraints and the need to provide crucial patient care.
We have made the decision to clarify this subject in order to help your company realize real benefits from healthcare software solutions.
What is software development for healthcare?
The development of software specifically for the healthcare sector with the goal of enhancing patient care, accuracy, and efficiency is known as healthcare software development.
Thus, healthcare software can create a whole ecosystem inside your company that will allow you to offer precise and superior clinical services.
To put it more precisely:
- Physicians have easy access to reporting, staff management, appointment scheduling, patient health status tracking, and more.
- In addition to receiving health advice, patients can schedule appointments, communicate with doctors, and exchange reports.
These are but a handful of the numerous advantages that software offers the healthcare sector.
Overview of the Healthcare Software Development Market
The promise of software development for the healthcare sector is to digitalize the antiquated paper-based infrastructure and guarantee more effective patient safety and care. The market value of the mobile health sector was over $45 billion in 2020, which is rather remarkable for such a young sector.
And until COVID-19 hit us all, everything was going well for a while. Following their first shock, many healthcare stakeholders began to focus on the value proposition of software development in this industry. Healthcare organizations initially reduced their IT budget (in the first step of the three-phased reaction: respond, recover, and renew).
The pandemic and popular business software development trends have caused a sharp increase in the mobile health industry, which is expected to reach a projected market value of approximately $100 billion by the end of 2021. With a $17.5 billion venture capital investment in healthcare technology, we will see new technical deals in fields like genomics, virtual care, on-demand research or digital labs, clinical administration, medical big data, etc.
Additionally, medical software development is spawning new industries like gamification in healthcare, clinical robotics, patient engagement, telehealth, and more.
Numerous businesses have been inspired to work on their concepts and bring their visions to life by the widespread acceptance of healthcare software solutions.
Different Software Types for Healthcare
The number of healthcare apps available on the Play Store and App Store combined is currently over 95,000, and it is constantly growing. Therefore, you should be aware of the various kinds that are on the market if you intend to develop a healthcare website or app. Determine your wants and desires for modifications after familiarizing yourself with the features and classifications of current healthcare projects.
Software for patients or general users and software for healthcare professionals are the two categories into which healthcare software falls.
Personalized Medical Software Development for Individuals or Groups
This should be fairly obvious. These days, you can create software of this kind to greatly simplify the lives of users or patients. These gorgeously made apps are straightforward but quite helpful, serving a variety of functions and advantages, like:
1. Software for Health Monitoring
Health monitoring apps are one of the best instances of healthcare software applications, as they can be used for anything from symptom assessment to prescribing medication. With the use of this program, patients with long-term medical disorders (such as diabetes, cancer, or cardiovascular diseases) can also maintain their health and take the required precautions.
2. Software for Monitoring Medication
Recently, medical software developers have seen a significant increase in the use of medication tracking apps. These apps can assist patients in tracking nearby pharmacies, the deals those stores are running, and other things, in addition to conveniently scheduling and reminding them to take their medications.
3. Software for Mental Health
Businesses now have a fantastic opportunity to support consumers in taking care of their mental health, thanks to this type of software. Numerous services, including gamification features, breathing exercises, pre-recorded meditations, and more, are included in mental health software to help users deal with anxiety, depression, stress, sleeping difficulties, and other issues.
4. Software for Medical Education
Make a medical education app if you wish to provide your consumers with a real, reliable database that contains the most recent medical knowledge. These applications are a great resource for everyone interested in learning more about healthcare, from normal users to doctors and students.
5. Software for a Healthier Lifestyle
This category of software includes a wide range of app features, such as applications for therapy, brain training, exercise, fitness, and wellbeing, etc. You can live a healthier lifestyle with the aid of all these advantages.
6. Apps for Dieting
One excellent example of specialized medical software development is found in diet apps. With the help of tools like meal planning, calorie calculations, reminders, health and food-related information, and more, users may create a diet plan and adhere to healthy eating habits.
Process of Developing Software for Healthcare
The stages involved in developing a healthcare app may vary from business to business. Additionally, you can modify the procedure to fit the needs of your specific product.
However, we’ve outlined the five essential phases of creating a strong healthcare app here, which you should follow:
1. Identify the issue that needs to be resolved
In 2021, creating a mobile application won’t be sufficient. Both market saturation and the expectations of users, patients, and medical experts are steadily increasing.
Therefore, identifying the correct problem to solve and developing a suitable solution are crucial components of a successful mobile app. To determine the holes in the market and how your product can fill them, conduct in-depth market research and watch your competition.
We advise you to give it another look, even if you have already defined the issue. You can get together with a small group of potential customers and present your idea for bespoke software development for healthcare to them. By doing so, you can make sure you are addressing the issue from the appropriate perspective or even find an alternative angle that will be more advantageous.
You can also speak with medical professionals such as doctors, nurses, and other staff members to acquire real and useful insights on how to offer a true and practically helpful product for them.
2. Identify Who Your Target Market Is
Since healthcare applications seek to provide comprehensive solutions, they must have a sizable user base.
Instead of making assumptions and taking a hit-and-miss strategy, knowing the needs and priorities of your target group will help you create an effective app that will win over users.
For instance, healthcare software has to have easy accessibility. If older users are your target audience, you might want to use bolder buttons, legible typefaces, and an uncomplicated user interface.
Comprehending your intended audience is crucial for optimizing the development process overall. Once your priorities have been established, speak with a skilled healthcare software development business to select the optimal tech stack, platform, and UX options for user uptake.
3. Create an Adaptable Design
An app’s initial version typically has certain restricted features, which is perfectly OK. Your software can benefit consumers far more if it is smaller and more specifically designed to address a specific need.
But the best course of action is always to create a scalable app from the ground up. As your target audience expands and you develop stronger customer personas over time, you’ll need to update and add new features to keep your system operating at peak efficiency.
To avoid having to spend more money and effort later on, you should take care of the design guidelines and coding.
4. Put the Tech Stack and Product Team Together
It’s time to assemble the software product development team and begin the custom healthcare software development procedure when you’ve decided on the essential features and design of your app.
Recall that your team shouldn’t be operating in silos if you want to deliver true value to your end users. This means that your product team needs to be made up of a variety of specialized experts, including a project manager, senior and junior developers, UX/UI designers, and so on.
After your team is put together, select the tech stack that works best for your project. You can target iOS or Android consumers, or both, by selecting the appropriate framework for native or cross-platform app development.
5. Produce an MVP, or minimum viable product.
Even though you can skip this stage and design an app from scratch in a single go, we nevertheless advise you to start with an MVP. An MVP, to put it briefly, is a product’s initial release with a small feature set that is intended for early users to test and provide feedback on.
You could wonder why it’s necessary.
Medical software programs are, well, rather costly. Creating an MVP early on will assist you in determining whether or not your users are interested in the product. In order to make improvements to your product, ask them for constructive criticism. Additionally, you will always have the opportunity to make any necessary corrections before creating the finished result.
6. Go onto Test Mode
Never undervalue the extraordinary importance of testing. Software testing gives you the ability to assess your app’s user experience, identify problems with development, gather feedback, and make the required adjustments practically immediately.
You may test your app’s compatibility with your intended audience by running it through testing. You can select between functional and unit testing, analyze the perspective of users, and reevaluate their expectations. We have seen customers dislike certain features that our clients were thrilled about, trust me, based on our years of expertise developing healthcare software.
To put it briefly, software testing allows you to find and solve flaws in your healthcare app and ensure that it gets better with each new release.
7. Product Launch and Upkeep
Your app is now complete and ready to be released onto the market. An app that has been completely deployed will require ongoing maintenance and support. Because regular maintenance keeps your app safe from emerging cyberthreats and keeps it current with new features and third-party API updates, you should recognize the value of app maintenance for mobile devices.
If you do not take app maintenance seriously, there could be substantial financial penalties and other repercussions for your healthcare company.
A Look Into Developing Custom Healthcare Software
Globally, the number of healthcare SaaS startups and product companies has increased over the past two years, with the majority of them outsourcing their medical software projects.
The most crucial question is: Where should you outsource? Choosing a vendor is a difficult and time-consuming process, and making the wrong decision might wind up costing you the entire project.
When selecting software outsourcing services for the creation of healthcare solutions, keep the following five things in mind:
1. Technological Proficiency
Verify the company’s competencies if you have selected the right tech stack for your healthcare app. A clinical software development company, for example, needs to have enough experience with embedded software development.
2. Knowledge of the Industry
To create a successful healthcare app, the development team needs to have deep topic knowledge. Look for projects that are similar to ones they have previously worked on.
3. Skilled Programmers
An application for healthcare has multiple tiers, a complex architecture, and a variety of technologies. Therefore, the healthcare developers at your software development firm need to have a lot of experience in order to work on your project.
4. Capacity and Scalability
Engaging large or mid-sized development companies, especially those specializing in hospital management software, is recommended. Such firms typically possess greater capacity, advanced tools, and well-established procedures, bringing extensive experience in handling large-scale projects. They should be capable of providing a substantial team and ample resources tailored to meet the specific requirements of your software project.
5. Safety Procedures
Providing software solutions for healthcare requires handling enormous amounts of sensitive data. Therefore, make sure your prospective outsourcing partner develops a healthcare app that conforms with international security requirements such as HIPAA, PCI, and ISO and has strong security policies.
