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Starting SaaS Business in Healthcare

Key Aspects

Since 2005, ScienceSoft has been a reliable healthcare software consulting and development partner for startups and established software development companies.

How to Enter the Healthcare SaaS Market - ScienceSoft
How to Enter the Healthcare SaaS Market - ScienceSoft

Healthcare SaaS Market Overview

The healthcare cloud computing market was valued at $39.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach $89.4 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 17.8%. The main growth driver for the healthcare Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions market is the ambition of healthcare organizations to increase care quality via adopting advanced technology fast without major investments.

How to Start a Healthcare SaaS Business: Action Points

  1. Analyze the market, competitors, and potential software users.
  2. Detail software requirements and roadmap the features.
  3. Design SaaS architecture.
  4. Plan investments and payback.
  5. Define a cloud platform, customization, and integration SaaS capabilities.
  6. Create a PoC.
  7. Plan the development and testing process.
  8. Plan customer acquisition, product promotion.
  9. Launch MVP and improve the app based on customers’ feedback.

Healthcare SaaS Business Models

Development and promotion of a Software-as-a-Service solution for the healthcare industry depend on your business type and the target audience for your product.

Healthcare SaaS Software Specifics for Different Company Types

A pure SaaS solution provider

Purpose: to launch a brand-new healthcare software product.

Focus on:

  • Architecture supporting the use of advanced technologies relevant to healthcare (e.g., IoT, AR, VR).
  • Creating competitive subscription plans that will help gain new users fast (e.g., free trial, discounts based on the number of users per healthcare organization).

A provider of an on-premises healthcare software product/products partially moving to the SaaS model

Purpose: to test the demand for healthcare SaaS applications.

Focus on:

  • Splitting functionality and designing subscription plans that help gain new users.
  • Migrating the key functionality of on-premises healthcare software products to the cloud, leaving advanced features for on-premises software only.

A provider of an on-premises healthcare software product/products fully migrating to the SaaS model

Purpose: to migrate an on-premises healthcare product/ products to the cloud and sell them on a subscription basis.

Focus on:

  • Redesigning software to ensure medical staff or patients can conveniently use it on various devices (tablets, PCs, laptops).
  • Promoting the redesigned SaaS solutions to existing and potential clients.

Healthcare SaaS Software Specifics for Different Target Customers

Small, often newly established, healthcare organizations

  • Customers are looking for a ready-to-use solution that doesn’t need much customization.
  • A rather small number of integrations may be needed.

Focus on:

  • Intuitive UI and attractive design.
  • Creating thorough self-learning materials for app users (healthcare professionals or patients).

Mature healthcare organizations

  • Customers are looking for software that matches well with their existing software.
  • A large number of users and user roles in an organization.

Focus on:

  • API integrations.
  • Rich customization capabilities.

Key Functional Aspects of Healthcare SaaS

Healthcare SaaS management

  • Healthcare SaaS subscription and license management (subscription renewal, license changing, etc.).
  • Real-time SaaS usage tracking and reports to optimize features for healthcare professionals and patients.
  • Feature management (e.g., A/B feature version testing, selected feature activation).

Healthcare SaaS billing and payment management

  • Agile billing system that can adjust to pricing model changes.
  • Payment gateway to accept payments through different channels (a card, bank transfers, Apple Pay / Google Pay, etc.).
  • Automatic software sales tax handling and invoicing.
  • Payment failure handling.

User experience

  • UX optimized for clinical processes.
  • Intuitive user interface.
  • Automated data synchronization between a healthcare SaaS app and other apps used by a customer (e.g., EHR, CRM, HIE) due to API-based integration capabilities of a SaaS app.
  • User experience surveys to improve the product.

Support and training for medical staff and patients

  • In-app help desk.
  • Video tutorials.
  • A knowledge base and webinars for Healthcare SaaS users (e.g., physicians, nurses, patients).

Compliance and data security

  • Data encryption for PHI and financial data.
  • Password-protected login.
  • Role-based access.
  • HIPAA, FDA, and ONC compliance.
  • Automated assessment of security risks.
  • DDoS protection.

Healthcare SaaS Features to Outcompete Rivals

Features based on advanced technologies

  • Natural language processing capabilities (e.g., voice recognition for health data entry, handwritten text recognition for prescriptions processing).
  • SaaS connectivity with smart medical devices or biosensors to collect patient health data, enable remote care or continuous automated vitals’ monitoring.
  • Artificial Intelligence to automate identification of potential HIPAA compliance risks and PHI security threats in software.

Built-in data analytics capabilities

to help increase patient care workflows’ effectiveness (e.g., hospitalization, pre-surgery and post-surgery care, complications prevention management, patient discharge).

Launch Your SaaS Product Fast

To help you start a healthcare SaaS business, ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT experts are ready to productize your idea, define SaaS features, architecture, tech stack, and optimize project costs and development time.

Operating Costs Structure for a Healthcare SaaS Product

While planning your healthcare SaaS, it is necessary to calculate investments and estimate monthly app operation expenses, which include:

  • Cloud services usage.
  • SaaS application and cloud infrastructure maintenance.
  • Help desk for healthcare professionals and patients (24/7, 12/5, etc.).
  • Regular security checks (with a focus on HIPAA compliance).
  • Infrastructure for new features roll-out and healthcare SaaS application evolution.

Lower Investments, Faster Payback for Healthcare SaaS

Develop less OOTB functionality

and leave space for customizations on a healthcare provider’s side: it reduces time-to-market but keeps the product flexible for customers.

Utilize ready-made cloud services

(for example, services provided by AWS and Azure), e.g., for embedding AI-based patient chatbots or integrating connected medical devices, instead of developing such functionality from scratch.

Opt for agile development

to get MVP and start selling your healthcare software faster.

Healthcare SaaS Consulting and Development Services to Succeed in the Market

With 18 years in healthcare IT, ScienceSoft wields the first-hand healthcare software consulting and development experience in this industry and is ready to help you launch your SaaS project.

Healthcare SaaS consulting

Our healthcare IT consultants will:

  • Analyze the feasibility of your healthcare SaaS product concept.
  • Elaborate on OOTB healthcare SaaS features.
  • Design a scalable multi-tenancy architecture for a healthcare SaaS application.
  • Decide on a customization and integration approach.
  • Choose an optimal tech stack.
  • Determine implementation investments and calculate the anticipated ROI.
Go for consulting

Healthcare SaaS development

As a technology partner, we will help you:

  • Productize the healthcare SaaS idea and prioritize software features.
  • Create a PoC.
  • Design UX and UI with a focus on medical staff’s and patients’ convenience.
  • Develop your healthcare SaaS in agile iterations.
  • Test healthcare SaaS product quality.
  • Design and implement integrations (with EHR/EMR, HIS, imaging software, marketing software, etc.).
  • Provide healthcare SaaS application and infrastructure support (if required).
Go for development

About ScienceSoft

Since 1989, ScienceSoft has been providing IT consulting and software development services to customers worldwide. Being ISO 13485-certified, our team is ready to help you plan, launch, and evolve your healthcare SaaS application according to the requirements of the FDA and the Council of the European Union.