How to Create and Expand Your Telehealth Application: This comprehensive guide equips you with the knowledge and strategies to successfully develop and grow your telehealth application and improve patient outcomes.
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Telehealth includes all activities and aspects of the healthcare system. At the time of the severe SARS-CoV pandemic, telehealth helped reduce the risk of spreading the virus. The market for telehealth and healthcare website development services has been rising for the past decade. The AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) warns that by 2033, the USA may have a doctor paucity of between 54,100 and 138,000. This makes patients wait a significant time to get an appointment.
Telehealth apps help people by consenting a doctor to treat patients remotely who live far away and people who can’t drive to the hospital. All they need is a smartphone, tablet, or computer with fast internet access to enable telehealth. Patients and doctors can communicate with each other from their comfortable spots.
Key Components of Telehealth
- Live video
- Store and forward
- Remote patient monitoring
- Mobile health
Why do you need Telehealth for your Healthcare Business?
Healthcare organizations are widening telehealth options and delivering virtual appointments. Its virtual healthcare models mature from virtual urgent care to longitudinal virtual care, hybrid in-person care models, and integration of telehealth with other virtual health solutions with the potential to enhance clients’ experiences, access, outcomes, and affordability.
Telehealth assists healthcare organizations and providers improve the quality and availability of healthcare. In addition, each provider can offer service to more patients in a short time. It enlarges the revenue without hiring office staff, adding providers, or adding office space.
Benefits of Telehealth
- Improves work/life balance
- Protection from competition
- Happier employees
- Fewer no-shows and last-minute cancellations
- Clinician and patient flexibility
- Ensures timely care
- Increases revenue
- Drives patient loyalty
- Reduces hospital’s daily expenses
- Reduces exposure to pathogens
- Cuts down on travel and time off from work
- Easy access to get care from a specialist whose appointment is hard to obtain
- Prescription management
- Post-surgical follow-up
- Doctors also get clarity from specialists
- Night care for children and babies
Types of Telehealth Applications
- Remote patient monitoring
- Store and forward
- Telenursing
- Teleradiology
- Telepharmacy
- Telerehabilitation
- Teledermatology
- Telepsychiatry
- Telepathology
- Teleneuropsychology
- Telecare
- eHealth
- Teleophthalmology
- Real-Time Telemedicine
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Phases Involved in a Telehealth App Development
Hospitals, patients, doctors, and clinics are interested in developing telehealth apps. The first and most important thing is understanding the target audience and identifying the users (patients, doctors, lab technicians, and administrators).
Following are the steps involved in developing telehealth apps.
Project Planning
- Developing your telemedicine app starts with documenting all the requirements. It includes performing market research, competitor research, identifying target audiences, eliciting software requirements, understanding compliance requirements, designing integrations, and planning budgets
- Identify your app’s audience. It is important to understand the target audience with the proper technology
- Research the competition. Competitive analysis is a notable term for identifying and evaluating the competition’s strengths and weaknesses in an app or set of features. Knowing your unique value proposition is one of the most important conversion factors for your product
- Establish the app’s goals and objectives
Engineering and Software Planning
- The first choice you need to make is the operating system. Android and iOS cater to various target audiences. The right platform improves efficiency, revenues, and user satisfaction
- Create a software architecture based on the business objectives and project requirements
- Consider web applications for patients who cannot access Android or iOS
UX and UI Design
- UI and UX design are significant factors in telehealth app development. It should be created based on the product backlog and the app’s concept
- UI design includes the layout of the design and adds skin to the color contrast, buttons, fonts, UX wireframes, and all other visual aspects of the app to achieve the user’s goals within the app
- Modifications must be made as needed until the goal is achieved which is easy usability
Choose APIs to Integrate into your APP
- There are countless APIs and SDKs available to help you build a telehealth app with microservices
- To make your decision-making process more manageable, check out our top telehealth APIs for your healthcare app development
Testing and Quality assurance
- The QA team tests and debugs the application at every development stage
- There is a need to do peer code reviews and unit tests on various devices to ensure high-quality performance and functionality
- Stress testing before the app launch is required to determine whether the app can handle an influx of new users
- Plan for a final round of quality assurance that includes regression testing and covers everything you did previously
Deployment and Software Maintenance
- After executing all the previous phases, the application is ready to deploy and is placed in the app store for download
- Once the telehealth app launches in the global market, the application requires maintenance and updates frequently, so make sure your team is always ready to provide ongoing support
Compliance and Data Security Regulations
- When developing a telehealth app, the security of healthcare data is paramount. Numerous regulations require that your telehealth app be privacy and data-security compliant
- The data privacy regulations are HIPAA, GDPR, PIPEDA, SOC 2, ISO, etc.,
- You need to ensure that it cannot be accessed if the server or device is physically compromised, along with data encryption
- Access only the required information for your app to function and provide value to your users
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Tools and Technologies Used for App Development
Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial intelligence chatbots fill the gap where doctors are not available. This FAQ chatbot can answer users’ questions about scheduling, doctor availability, and more
- It reduces the need for a specialist and helps with treatment recommendations and better diagnoses
- For example, the Google Vision API detects faces and labels web images using pre-trained machine learning. It spots diabetic retinopathy with retinal images just as well as a highly-trained ophthalmologist can
Did you know?
The size of the IoT integration market is expected to grow from USD 2.4 billion in 2022 to USD 9.2 billion by 2027.
Internet of Things (IoT)
- The IoT in the healthcare system attracts more investments in the USA. It collects data from integrated IoT devices for personalized care
- IoT devices include medical kiosks, wearables, tablets, digital cameras, etc.; they provide the basis for remote patient monitoring (RPM)
- Doctors use smart drug dispensers to set pill schedules without patient involvement. It sends notifications to the patient’s device at the correct time.
- Alexa is a well-known IoT service that controls almost everything in the smart home
- Companies like Ekuore are targeting the development of digital stethoscopes and other advanced wearables to reduce the risk of disease spread
Cloud Storage
- When it comes to making a house for your collected data, cloud storage, and cloud computing service is the best option, and they can be accessed via the internet
- It offers substantial advantages in agility, elasticity, and scalability that make it the perfect choice for healthcare IT services
- The telehealth app that uses a cloud-based EHR system allows users to access and manage medical data according to their authorization levels
Blockchain
- Blockchain makes telehealth apps more secure by offering an additional secure ledger, and it allows patients and doctors to share data in an encrypted format
- Hacking the blockchain is impossible, and the healthcare data can only be accessed by the person who has the private key
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How to Expand Your Telehealth Application
Marketing Areas To Concentrate
- Telehealth businesses require a focus on creating significant value on the digital platform beyond discovery and marketing. You have to focus on effective marketing strategies to acquire users with high-frequency usage
- Make your content available with low latency and offline too
- Collaborate with fellow telehealth platforms that are serving doctors and patients for various reasons. but not with similar kinds of competitors
- Be updated about the changes in data privacy regulations and compliance like HIPAA for innovation opportunities
- The community-based aspect helps you build a loyal customer base. You can also generate original content
- Customers are likely to look for reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. You can also post testimonials on your website to show potential customers what others have said about your telehealth services
Features To Concentrate
- Find unique and useful features to attract your audience
- The healthcare app should be integrated with features that make work easy for doctors and patients
- Develop your platform to set video stream auto-adjust for different internet bandwidths
- Exploring international medicine for patients and doctors can be a great way to grow. For example, a patient in the UK can also consult with an expert in the US
- Discover the least satisfying area of your competitor’s app and try to fulfill it
- Understand the growth hacks to keep your doctors motivated and engaged on your platform
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Conclusion
The telehealth app industry is evolving. It’s a bit challenging to cover all the parts of telehealth application development and its role in the healthcare industry. With the elevation of demand in the market, there are multiple opportunities to grow and make a mark. It improves the service for both doctors and patients.
Do you have an idea to launch your telehealth application? ColorWhistle is here to help you with it. Explore our healthcare digital marketing service page to learn more about our service. We have a team of experts to provide first-rate services by understanding your requirements.
Connect with ColorWhistle by sending us a message or calling us at +1 (210) 787-3600. We are ready to work together with you.
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