Custom Healthcare and Medical Software Development Company

Most custom healthcare software projects cost between $60,000 and $250,000 or more. Telemedicine platforms typically run $60,000 to $120,000, patient portals $80,000 to $150,000, and custom EHR systems $120,000 to $250,000 and up. The main cost drivers are integration count, compliance requirements, and workflow complexity. Arkenea quotes a fixed price only after a discovery phase produces a functional specification, so the number is based on defined scope.

A focused MVP usually takes 4 to 6 months, and a full platform such as a custom EHR typically takes 9 to 18 months including integrations and compliance verification. Discovery and prototyping add a few weeks at the start and reliably save more than they cost by preventing mid project scope discoveries.

We treat HIPAA compliance as an architectural decision made during discovery, not a checklist before launch. Encryption of PHI in transit and at rest, role based access control, audit logging, and session safeguards are written into the functional specification, implemented as their own development phase, and verified during QA. We also sign business associate agreements and design data flows so PHI stays inside your compliance boundary.

Yes. We build bi directional EHR integrations using HL7 v2 messaging, FHIR APIs, CDA documents, and vendor specific APIs, along with electronic prescribing through Surescripts and lab and device interfaces. Integration is planned as its own workstream during discovery, including sandbox access and connection approvals, because those timelines are the most commonly underestimated part of healthcare projects.

The most common are ambient clinical documentation and note summarization, retrieval augmented chat assistants grounded in your approved content, machine learning diagnostics such as the implant identification model we built for Kethan AI, predictive analytics for risk and readmissions, and NLP for coding and claims. Every AI feature we ship includes a validation plan, human review where clinical decisions are involved, and a HIPAA compliant data path.

Yes. You own the source code, the intellectual property, and the product. This is stated in our agreements, and it matters most to founders and organizations who may later face due diligence from investors, acquirers, or enterprise customers.

Every engagement starts with discovery, which produces a functional specification and prototype. From there, most clients choose a fixed price build against that specification, and ongoing work after launch runs as a support and evolution retainer. For clients who need capacity rather than a product build, we also offer healthcare technology staffing.

Yes, the large majority of our clients are US healthcare organizations, and our compliance and integration experience is built around the US system: HIPAA, ONC criteria, CMS rules, MIPS and MACRA reporting, US payers, and US EHR vendors. We have worked with clients from single specialty practices to Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies since 2011.

Yes, that is exactly what the discovery phase is for. Many of our clients are clinicians or nontechnical founders who arrive with a validated problem and a rough concept. Discovery turns that into user flows, a functional specification, and a clickable prototype you can put in front of users and investors before committing to a full build.

We provide ongoing maintenance, security patching, monitoring, and feature development, typically budgeted at 15 to 25% of the initial build cost annually. Healthcare software faces evolving regulations, EHR API changes, and OS updates, so we treat launch as the midpoint of the relationship rather than the end.

Arkenea has worked only in healthcare since 2011, which is rare even among firms that rank for healthcare software keywords; most are generalists with a healthcare page. The practical differences are a team that already knows clinical workflows and healthcare data standards, compliance designed into architecture from day one, a discovery first model that fixes price against a real specification, and recognition specific to this work: the GHP Global Excellence Award for Best Custom Healthcare Software Development Company for 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Yes. We develop Software as a Medical Device and companion software under IEC 62304 aligned processes and FDA 21 CFR Part 820 quality expectations, and we flag during discovery whether your product, including any AI features, falls under FDA oversight so the regulatory pathway is planned before development begins.

FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is the HL7 standard that defines how healthcare systems exchange data through modern APIs, and it has become the default way new software connects to EHRs. Federal information blocking rules and EHR certification requirements have pushed major vendors to expose FHIR APIs, which makes integrations more standardized than they were a decade ago. We design new products FHIR first and fall back to HL7 v2 or CDA where a connected system requires it.

Usually yes, and it is often the fastest path to value because your workflows and data already exist. Typical additions are document and note summarization, intake and triage assistants, coding support, and predictive flags inside existing screens. The work starts with a data readiness and compliance assessment, since AI features are only as good as the data path behind them, and every addition still needs a validation plan and a HIPAA compliant inference path.

Beyond the HIPAA Security Rule safeguards, we implement secure development practices across the lifecycle: threat modeling during design, dependency and vulnerability scanning in the build pipeline, penetration testing before major releases, infrastructure as code with least privilege access, and logging designed for incident response. For clients selling to health systems, we also prepare the security documentation their vendor risk assessments demand, which shortens enterprise sales cycles measurably.

In practice the terms overlap almost completely, and buyers use them interchangeably. When a distinction is drawn, medical software usually refers to software closest to clinical care and diagnosis, including regulated medical device software, while healthcare software covers the broader set including administrative, operational, and payer systems. Arkenea builds across both: clinical tools like EHRs and diagnostic AI, and operational systems like revenue cycle and compliance automation.

Data migration is scoped as its own workstream during discovery, with a mapping of every record type in the legacy system to the new data model. We migrate in stages, validate against source data, and run the old and new systems in parallel long enough to confirm nothing was lost, because clinical history is not something you get a second chance to move. Hamilton Physical Therapy's migration from a commercial EHR followed exactly this pattern.

A dedicated team assembled from our 50+ engineers, UI/UX designers, and analysts, matched to your product's stack and domain, with a lead who stays with the project from discovery through support. You work with the people building the software directly rather than through an account management layer, and the team that built your product is the team that maintains it after launch.