Exploring Telemedicine Software Development: Features, Process, and Cost

Telemedicine is no longer a buzzword in the medical field. The telemedicine industry was thriving even before the covid pandemic. The telemedicine market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 22.67% and reach 175.5 billion USD by 2026.

With healthcare organizations of all sizes evolving with the trends and adopting telemedicine, there is now a boom in telemedicine app development.

Developing a telemedicine app can be a game-changer for healthcare organizations and providers. Telemedicine services can eliminate healthcare providers’ difficulties, providing better healthcare facilities.

This article will cover everything you need to know to develop custom telemedicine software.

What is Telemedicine? 

Telemedicine is a service that enables you to speak with a specialist remotely. A provider can schedule appointments with patients with a click of a button and also can encounter remotely without the patient needing to travel to the provider’s clinic. Telemedicine provider ease of access of care to everyone.

Instead of a conventional approach, you can use a telemedicine app on your mobile to have an encounter with a provider.

We are living in unusual times. Although telemedicine was a good idea ten years ago, it is now essential for hospitals and healthcare providers. Because of the availability of advanced technology, the shift has been flawless. Telemedicine applications are becoming an increasingly important part of our daily life.

Telemedicine vs. Telehealth 

Although “telehealth” and “telemedicine” are sometimes used synonymously, they have significant distinct characteristics.

A more general word is “telehealth.” It is described as the use of technology in all aspects of healthcare. Electronic portals for transmitting or storing medical records may fall under this category. It may also have tools for remotely tracking essential metrics.

Following are some examples of telehealth app activities:

• Patients use a mobile app to monitor their cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

• They can access their lap reports, schedule appointments, and buy prescribed medicine via a patient portal.

• They would also be able to get online reminders for medication renewals, vaccines, or medical checks.

One subset of telehealth is telemedicine. You can access your doctor’s clinical services using information or communication technology. Telemedicine aims to provide treatment and, ideally, enhance health outcomes.

In other words, telemedicine is applying technology to avoid routine in-person visits while achieving clinical outcomes.

Following are some examples of Telemedicine activities:

• An X-Ray scan report is transferred through the internet, and the provider is notified.

• Consult a dermatologist through video chat if you have an uncommon skin rash or pigmentation.

What are the Benefits of Telemedicine apps? 

Telemedicine technologies have aided in the detection, diagnosis, management, therapy, and long-term monitoring of various chronic conditions. It provides several advantages to healthcare providers and patients, aiming to improve clinical outcomes.

• Minimal Pathogen Exposure: No in-person interaction between HCPs and patients. As a result, the likelihood of contracting a disease from pathogens decreases.

• Midnight Care: Telemedicine consultation provides medical services from remote locations in real time and is available to patients anytime.

• Assist doctor: During the most recent pandemic and lockdown, online consultation and chat between a patient and a provider worked efficiently.

• Chronic disease patient: Telemedicine is a handy choice for chronic disease patients since it allows them to avoid making actual hospital visits.

• Online Psychiatric Support: Physicians provide several benefits to psychiatric patients. Personalized treatment and speedy recovery are two examples.

Features of Telemedicine 

Standard telemedicine software often includes three independent but parallel components: a provider dashboard, a patient dashboard, and an admin dashboard. Here are the top telemedicine app features you should try to implement when developing a telehealth app.

a. Easy Patient Onboarding

Patients can schedule an appointment with the doctor of their choice after completing an easy and quick registration process. Instead of typing, patients can submit their medical data, insurance verification information, and past prescriptions before getting treatment from specialists.

b. Patient Management

Before giving treatment, providers can create patient profiles by gathering personal data, such as name, age, gender, medical history, prescription notes from prior visits, and other pertinent information. All patient profiles are directly accessible to the Provider, who may also remove, update, and review vitals and financial history.

c. Appointment Booking and Scheduling

Patients can browse doctor profiles and use a calendar to arrange an appointment with a provider. Doctors should be able to accept consultation requests, set their schedules, confirm appointment requests, and manage their appointments.

d. Video Consultation

Let providers teleconference with patients in real-time through video and voice calls. Teleconferencing should be seamless and high-quality so physicians can check patients remotely to identify illness signs and symptoms.

e. Instant Messaging and Chat

Extra features in the provider’s app include a personalized dashboard with in-built secure chats and messaging in any case.

f. Sharing Medical Records

It enables providers to share patients’ medical reports with them and view instructions at any time from anywhere.

g. Patient Charting and SOAP notes

Specialists can record patient problems in the form of SOAP notes. In this application, the Provider can write the prescription, suggest a lab test, Radio test, and also can advise the patient. This data will be stored in the application database; patients and providers can access it anytime in their dashboards individually.

h. Electronic Prescription

Enable doctors to prescribe medications right in the app. This feature is excellent for medicine renewals. Telemedicine application features for doctors are compatible with the patient app. However, some custom features can be included in this component of a telemedicine system.

i. Referral Management

Coordinating inbound and outgoing patient referrals, resulting in better convenience for healthcare providers, payers, and, most importantly, patients.  The technology enables health organizations to manage their referral cycle from start to finish in real-time. It allows doctors to speed up the process, reduce medical errors/delays, and advance access analytics for decision-making.

j. Alerts and Notification

Patients and providers can use this service to obtain automated updates on time. Dates, policy changes, special discounts, and other information are available. Individuals might be classed depending on their activity, geography, or other factors. It can aid in the creation of more tailored notifications.

k. Payments, Superbills and Claim Management

Patients can link their insurance plans to their telemedicine app account to benefit from their insurance claims. As a result, we integrate and verify insurance information and allow patients to benefit from their insurance claims.

l. EHR Integration

Connect the app’s provider panel to an electronic health records system. This allows the Provider to analyze the most recent revisions to a patient’s health information in case of issues or concerns.

Telemedicine App Development Process 

At Thinkitive, telemedicine software development is divided into seven significant phases. Each stage has its distinct stages, each monitored by a specialist.

Let’s take a closer look at each stage’s specific task breakdown.

1. Planning and Analysis

We begin telehealth software development with project analysis and planning. This step entails working closely with stakeholders to determine the following points:

• Business challenges

• The solution to all the queries of the client

• The best project timeframe and estimated budget

• The main goal of this stage is to develop a basic telehealth app development plan. We briefly discuss all the resources and time spent on development with our client.

Deliverables essential: Alignment of plans, project timeframe, and cost estimation

2. Project Specifications

The team determines the following points to estimate the project scope, timeframe, specialists engaged, and projected budget:

• The intended audience

• What issues will the telemedicine software address?

• API integrations and technical specs

• Concerns about security and privacy

The primary reason for this stage is to acquire comprehensive knowledge of the project requirements and guarantee the client’s prerequisite.

Deliverables essential: contract agreement containing specifics such as schedule, cost, and criteria

3. Design and Prototyping

The actual work on your telemedicine project begins at this point. During this stage, designers create wireframes that outline in-app user flow and interactions. The primary aim is to design a prototype that provides an excellent user experience.

Designers create an app’s user interface after finalizing the interface layout with our customers. We provide an app design concept after this step.

Deliverables essential: UX wireframes, UI design, and the concept of a telemedicine app

4. Development

Our Team of skilled developers starts the development process with the support of a product manager and QA engineers depending upon the client’s need, their preferred tech stack, features, and design The initial release is an MVP for user acceptance testing.

Deliverables essentials: The first operational version of an app or a comprehensive telemedicine platform.

5. Testing & QA

It is an essential step in the development process. Quality assurance engineers test an app’s functionality to guarantee excellent code quality, performance, and a pleasant user experience.

Deliverables essential: The telemedicine app is ready for use.

6. Deployment

When the development stage is complete, it is time to release a new product. Depending on the client’s requirement, our dedicated team of developers will provide the app source code and release the telemedicine app on the app store.

Deliverables essential: Telemedicine software is available in app stores.

7. Ongoing Development and Support

After your app has been successfully released in the market, the process of telehealth software development continues. The necessity for being competitive is to deliver regular updates, bug fixes, and functional enhancements. In collaboration with our customers, we plan subsequent upgrades and releases based on the analytics data you collect after the app launch.

App upgrades, reliable performance, and timely functionality updates are key deliverables.

Telemedicine App Development Costs 

How much does a custom Telemedicine software development cost? This is a tricky question to answer. The app development cost is influenced by multiple factors, including features, design, and service charges.

Future of Telemedicine 

Several pandemics have struck in recent decades, including H1N1, Ebola, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and, most recently, COVID-19. More unexpected pandemics are likely to emerge in the future. Before the epidemic, regulatory and payment constraints kept telemedicine from completely integrating into the healthcare environment. The development and usage of telemedicine services are crucial since they provide high-quality healthcare facilities while maintaining social distancing to prevent viral infections.