Understanding the Cost of Developing a Healthcare Mobile App

Healthcare mobile app development is surging faster due to digitization and rise in preference of using telehealth/telemedicine for care facilities.

As per a report, the cost of developing a healthcare mobile app or mhealth app, if you’re developing it with an in-house team, is approximately $425,000, which includes external and internal development costs, along with marketing expenses. However, it doesn’t consist follow-ups and maintenance costs after launch.

Read on to discover aspects impacting health mobile app development costs and to get an overall gist of money required to develop a mobile application for healthcare practices.

Cost Breakdown of Healthcare Mobile App Development 

6 Vital Aspects Impacting Cost of Healthcare Mobile App Development

1. Time to Market

If time to market is slow then competitors dominate the market and a healthcare app developer will have a hard time catching up. Moving slower leads to low profitability of a product. The sooner a healthcare app enters the market, the faster and easier it is to bring in revenues.

Low time to market lowers cost of healthcare mobile app development as less time is spent on producing the application. Consider using MVP (Minimum Viable Product) while developing healthcare mobile app as this allows a application to enter the market quickly.

MVP helps tp accelerate time to market as a healthcare application is tested for solving user problems beforehand, thus reducing risks and time for redeveloping the same model.

Furthermore, evaluate and measure the development process as this helps to refine processes by removing unnecessary bottlenecks that slow down time to market.

In case of having an outsourced development team, its recommended to invest in tools that enable digital workspaces for video/audio calls for a strategic cooperation, as this too helps to reduce time to market for a healthcare mobile app development.

2. Healthcare App Features

Cost of healthcare mobile app features depends on pricing models – perpetual, subscription, and freemium. For instance, EMR/EHR feature cost is based on two factors – number of healthcare providers using it and integrations in EMR/EHR.

The EMR feature usually operates on two pricing models –  perpetual and subscription pricing models. However, pay per model is one of the common ones for SaaS solutions.

Furthermore, other features such as billing and payments depends on the hosting services – cloud and self-hosted. When it comes to cloud, there’s a note that says ‘cost per claim’, this is extra expenses to the monthly fees charged by the healthcare providers for every successful claim.

In addition to this, patient-doctor management feature takes up more money as compared to others due to type of software used and size of practice.

In a nutshell, analyzing application requirements and features, providers can estimate healthcare mobile app development costs.

3. Designing

Customized designs are preferred by healthcare mobile apps as this allows to give a unique experience to the users, also the credibility and authority of healthcare professionals surges as well.

On an average, it takes around $3000 – $120,000 to design a customized application as per project scope, team efforts, and functionality of the healthcare application.

A customized healthcare mobile application is exclusive to the services provided, and its recommended that while creating a unique design basic UX/UI principals are adhered to.

Furthermore, the overall cost of designing UX/UI for a healthcare mobile app varies with approach as customization takes effort, time, and money, plus there’s no restriction to the type of design and the level of designers hired to get the job done.

Apart from this, healthcare mobile app designing is affected by goal of designing, for example, improving or redesigning an existing app, creating an app from scratch, and rebuilding app from the start.

A custom design depends on animation, branding, and illustrations; the more advanced each of these aspects are, the more time consuming it is (a rich design means more investments).

4. Development Team

Debate of whether to prefer in-house team or an outsourced team for developing mobile applications is unending. The choice of choosing the type of development team depends on project, functionalities needed, expertise required, and approach. Both in-house and outsourced development teams come with their own set of pros and cons.

In case of an in-house healthcare app development team, all team members are aligned with the culture of organization. Synergized teams provide better results, which is missed with outsourced teams.

Furthermore, there’s a direct communication between team members and they’re working in a common workspace, thus accelerating discussions and finalizing project requirements or launches.

However, in terms of expenses, an in-house team is expensive due to payrolls, insurance, recruitment expenditures, social security, and more. As per Payscale reports, an average salary of a IT developer in the USA is $71,508.

The turnover rates are also affected in case of bad hires, and training an in-house team requires additional costs and time as well. On the other hand, cost of hiring an outsourced development team is lower as compared to in-house, and there’s no limit to talent pool.

It’s recommended to opt for an outsourced team, especially in the initial phases of your startup or the initial few iterations of the application to help you get to the market quicker and at the same time, keeping the budget in check.

5. Development Platform

A development platform helps to use a healthcare mobile app’s assets fully, and the platform options include –

1. Cross-platform development: This enables creating applications for several platforms by reusing the same code. This is inexpensive, therefore it eliminates the need to hire several developers to get the job done. However, cross-platforms apps are less user-friendly, more sluggish, and have limited functionalities.

2. Native app development: This includes separate languages for Android and iOS, Swift or Objective-C for iOS, and Kotlin or Java for Android. By creating separate applications, functional errors are prevented and allows adjustments whenever necessary. The downside of this is that native development requires more money, effort, and time.

Amongst the two, cross-platform development is quicker to incorporate, however is likely to have shortcomings, thus costing money.

Comparatively, native development is reliable, but demands money. A cost-effective choice of development platform depends on the purpose and features of of the healthcare mobile app.

6. Compliance and Regulations

Launching a healthcare mobile app needs investments for regulations and policies, which in turn impact the development process as well.

Healthcare app developers that specialize in development of healthcare software products are already well versed in the compliance and regulatory requirements when developing a healthcare mobile app.

Hiring an specialized healthcare mobile app development company such as Arkenea can thus shorten your road to success when getting a healthcare app developed for your practice. Essential components impacting compliance are –

1. In-app security: This encompasses multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, and limited session timing.

2. Application stores: Apple and Google stores need compliance to safeguard users information. google play store developers charge $25, and Apple store developers charge $99 for basic and individual organizations, and $299/year for enterprises.

3. Governmental Institutions: These include HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act).

According to a report by American Hospital Association, 25 percent of the total hospital spending, around $200 billion, go to administrative expenses; and $1200 are spent by hospitals on compliance every time a patient is admitted.

Summing Up

Along with the above mentioned aspects impacting the healthcare mobile app development, other facets such as inflation and rise in interest rates too have considerable impact on the expenses. The above mentioned figures are to provide a brief insight on the estimated range for developing a healthcare mobile app.

If you’ve got a healthcare app idea in mind, then connect with Arkenea – strategic and development partner for creating healthcare mobile applications.