How to Develop a Doctor Appointment App: Complete Guide

For today’s high-tech world where online food ordering or hotel booking takes only a few minutes, the existence of health facilities with tired patients trapped in endless lines for booking an appointment with a doctor may seem barbaric. If you’ve decided it’s time to earn bonus points for your clinic on satisfying clients with an excellent doctor appointment app, then you’ve come to the right page. Here in the article, you’ll have everything you need to know before you start transforming that ingenious business idea into reality.

Every day, medical organizations provide thousands of people with vital healthcare services, the quality of which directly affects the condition and life of their clients.

Unfortunately, user-unfriendly applications that clients have to use to book medical services give them another headache and negatively affect the work of administrative staff.

Creating a high-quality doctor appointment booking app will beсome a win-win solution for both your patients and medical staff.

How Can an Appointment App Help You and Your Clients?

If we talk about clinics, the creation of a doctor appointment app is the most effective way to increase the productivity of your administrative staff, since thanks to the app development they won’t have to spend hours scheduling appointments anymore.

Besides, according to Sensor Tower, health-related apps generated record downloads in April 2020 and record revenue in May 2020, whereas another source predicts that the global healthcare IT market is expected to reach $390.7 billion by 2024 from $187.6 billion in 2019.

This means making a doctor booking app is highly relevant today. With such an app, the medical institution can provide quality care for every patient and stay competitive in the healthcare marketplace.

Then, when it comes to the benefits that customers can get from using a doctor appointment app the things gets even more obvious.

See for yourself. Most of the patients are people who suffer from serious diseases that can turn a visit to the doctor into a challenge, both physical and emotional. Just imagine what a relief for such people is to be able to use the app that allows you to easily find the right doctor and go for an online consultation or order medications safely even without leaving home (which is another huge benefit given the depressing statistics on the spread of COVID 19).

Yet the benefits of using a doctor booking app don’t end here. To gain a more complete understanding of how a doctor appointment booking app works for patients and health care facilities, keep on reading.

Benefits of Using a Hospital Appointment App

Well, after studying the above benefits of doctor appointment apps, we’ve come to the most important section of the article. How to develop a great doctor booking app? What must-have features should you consider? And finally, how much will it cost you to develop such an application? Let’s find out.

How to Create a Doctor Appointment App for Your Hospital: Major Features to Include

If you’d like to create a successful doctor booking app you should consider three major end-user panels in such an app. These are user, doctor, and admin panels. Below we will list the features of each of the three panels.

Patient Panel

• Sign up/log in: The feature allows patients to sign up or log in to the application using their personal social media account or email address.
• Create a user profile: Include this feature to give users the opportunity to enter all the data necessary for the provision of medical services (name, gender, age, etc.).
• File uploads: With this feature, a patient will be able to upload all documents that may be necessary for the doctor to diagnose the case and for further treatment.
• Appointment booking: Here patients can select the date and time for a doctor’s appointment.
• Online consultations: The app will offer users to go for a video medical consultation.
• Payments: Users will be able to pay their bills online.
• Review: Using this feature, the patient can write an online review of the doctor.

Doctor Panel

• Sign up/log in: With this feature, the doctor can sign up or log in to the app and enter his/her credentials.
• Doctor’s profile: Here the doctor can complete the profile with his/her name, photo, education, experience, and other important details
• Appointment status: This feature is designed for the doctor to be able to track booked or canceled appointments.
• Accept or decline an appointment request: The doctor should also be able to either accept or reject any appointment.
• Write online prescriptions: On request, the doctor can give the patient an online prescription
• Access to patients’ health records and documents: A necessary feature that enables the doctor to study the patient history and analysis results to deliver quality health services.

Admin Panel

• Patient management: To improve customer service standards, the admin should have access to detailed patients’ information and their medical records.
• Doctor management: The admin should have access to information about all doctors using the app to categorize them based on their area of expertise.
• Marketing tools: The admin can launch loyalty programs, promotional offers, or coupon codes.

How Much Does It Cost?

Medical apps differ in costs. They can be $10,000 apps or $800,000 apps, and multiple factors affect the estimates. The major ones are:

• app complexity/customization
• the geographical location of the contractor
• app platform of choice (Android, iOS).

First, for sure, the larger the app, the higher the costs. Complex apps are harder to integrate and take ages to test properly. Moreover, customization will help your app shine brighter among the dozens of similar products but will make the resulting bill times higher than in the case of an off-the-shelf solution.

Second, depending on a country of development, the costs may vary. The highest development rates are in the US, while European countries can be more budget-friendly for you.

Last but not least, if your platform of choice is iOS, the costs are likely to be higher due to stricter app design guidelines.

Yet, to have a more comprehensive view of where your money goes, you should have a look at the people that will deliver the product for you.

Thus, to hire a team of 10 with $3,000-5,000/month per talent, you already get about $50,000 in the first month, while developing a large-scale app may take up to 10 months, which is $500,000! The good news is that with a nice team you can cut the costs to some extent (read this to find out how).

This may scare you off a bit, but look at the apps below! Get inspired by those apps that are already changing the future of the medical industry and be sure that all the efforts pay off in the end.

Examples of Best Apps for Doctor Appointments

• Practo

The Practo app is a mobile application of the Practo platform. The app is available in more than 20 countries worldwide. With Practo, millions of people who are looking for hospital services at their nearby location can book an appointment with a duly verified doctor right from their smartphones.

Using Practo, patients can get help in assessing health issues and interpreting diagnostic tests. They also can access such healthcare services as online medicine ordering or health insurance.

Moreover, the app gives users specific tips on how to maintain their health.

• ZocDoc

Free for both iPhone and Android users, ZocDoc allows patients to book the best local doctors instantly online, visit medical specialists in their offices, or video chat with them from home, view patient reviews of health care providers.

ZocDoc makes it easy to get the right care from pediatricians, OBGYNs, dentists, urologists, and more, avoiding weeks of waiting.

Besides, the app enables patients to scan their insurance cards to find providers that best match their needs.

• AmWell

One of the most popular – if not the most popular – consumer telehealth app worldwide, easy to use, and secure, AmWell allows for real-time interaction with U.S. board-certified doctors via your smartphone or desktop computer 24/7/365.

In addition to such medical services as consultation and diagnosis, by using the app patients can also get prescriptions.

• Talkspace

An online therapy platform with more than 2,000 licensed therapists that help people suffering from mental health issues. Talkspace allows patients to get matched with therapists online in the midst of an episode of depression when it’s too difficult to see a doctor in person.

Today with Talkspace, more than one million users coping with stressful life events or struggling with mental health issues are getting help through video and audio messaging services or live online sessions.

Bottom Line

The healthcare industry will never ever lose in demand, so if you were planning to launch an app for this area this can’t be a wrong decision. The tricky part is how to do it right.

In this article, we’ve shared with you our insights on the reasons to develop a doctor appointment app, the features to include in it, and the costs to expect. You’ve also read about the prominent examples of such apps that already won thousands of users’ hearts. With all this knowledge, the only thing that may keep you from getting started is the lack of talents.

Why, there’s no problem with that at all, as we will be happy to deliver your great app for you. Qulix Systems is a top outsourcer for large-scale demanding projects enjoying wide audiences.

Contact our support team to get the details for cooperation options or have a look at our website.