Telemedicine App Development: Planning, Sourcing and Costs

Telemedicine App Development In Brief

The development of a telehealth app MVP may take around 4-8 months for the development, including steps like requirements engineering, project planning, UX and UI design, app development and launch. The project requires a team of a project manager, a business analyst, a regulatory consultant, UI and UX designers, front-end and back-end developers, QA and DevOps engineers, and the development costs start from $150,000.

Telehealth Solutions

ScienceSoft illustrates how telemedicine technology is used in specific fields of healthcare and outlines features, beneficial integrations and success factors for the following solutions:

Telemedicine App Development Plan

Depending on a telemedicine application’s specific features and scale, the development plan steps and their duration may differ, some of them may overlap with each other. Below we present a generalized process outline based on our 16-year experience in healthcare IT projects.

Step 1. Telehealth app requirements engineering and software planning

Duration: from 4 weeks.

• For product companies: Telemedicine app market and competitors research, target customers identification, and a telehealth app idea productization.
• For healthcare organizations: Business needs specification and telehealth software requirements elicitation.
• Listing and prioritizing telemedicine software features (e.g., symptom-based doctor search, real-time video communication between doctors and patients), creating user scenarios for patients, doctors, admins; for telehealth products – splitting features into subscription plans.
• Gathering compliance requirements for applicable regulations (e.g., HIPAA, HITECH) and standards.
• High-level integrations design (e.g., with EHR, Health Information Exchange, Laboratory Information System), preliminary HIPAA-compliant software architecture design, tech stack selection, identification of needed software licenses.
• For telemedicine products: Customizations design – to define telehealth app capabilities allowing the customers to modify certain app modules.
• Preliminary budget planning.

The phase deliverables include:

• General telehealth software requirements specification.
• Telehealth app feature list.
• High-level telehealth app architecture design.
• Preliminary budget.

 Step 2. Project planning

Duration: from 2 weeks.

• Project scope.
• Software development life cycle model (e.g., Agile methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, are effective for complex projects requiring team flexibility).
• Budget plan.
• Project schedule, iterations, milestones and KPI plan.
• Software development risk assessment and a risk mitigation plan (covering such risks as delays in the development, third-party medical software integration issues, etc.).
• Assessment of the telehealth software usage risks (e.g., potential app misuse, risks to patients’ health) and mitigation plan. 

Step 3. UX and UI design

Duration: from 2 weeks.

• UX design – identifying main user scenarios (e.g., video appointment scheduling, prescription renewal) and visualizing the core functionality of a telehealth application (e.g., patient-doctor messaging, vitals’ tracking), mapping convenient user journeys (for patients, physicians, nurses, administrators).
• UI prototyping – to visualize how the telehealth app will look.
• UI design – to create attractive graphic interface elements.

The phase deliverables include:

• UX wireframes.
• User interface design document (all screens, assets, and source files).

Step 4. Telehealth application development and launch

Duration: starting from 2-6 months for the minimum viable product (MVP).

• Back-end and front-end development of the telehealth app – to create the server side of the application and APIs and transform UI design elements into a functioning user side.
• Testing – runs simultaneously with development to check a telehealth app’s functional requirements, identify and fix software defects, verify telehealth software security and HIPAA compliance, test usability and stability of the application.
• Revision of software usage risks – addressing the new risks, and actualization of the mitigation plan.
• Revision of telehealth software documentation – if the requirements changed during the app development.
• App certification according to relevant standards – e.g., 21 CFR 11 – for apps dealing with electronic prescriptions, IEC 82304-1:2016 – if the app presupposes integration with medical sensors or devices.
• Pilot roll-out – to present the fully developed app to the focus group (e.g., a group of doctors and patients in the healthcare organization), get their feedback, and improve the telehealth app accordingly.
• Telehealth app launch.

Development phase deliverables include:

• Developed and deployed telehealth application.
• Detailed architecture design.
• Application’s source code.
• Test documentation
• App setup guide, admin guide, support guide, user guide (for patients and for doctors).

Step 5. Telemedicine software maintenance and evolution

Duration: continuous.

• Telehealth software and underlying infrastructure support and maintenance – to mitigate incidents, fix revealed defects and facilitate smooth work and evolution of the app.
• Telehealth software security audits – to regularly verify PHI security, test the application and its infrastructure for HIPAA compliance.
• Telemedicine software evolution – to roll out new features and improve software based on the analyzed feedback from clinical staff and patients.

Consider Professional Services for Telemedicine App Development

ScienceSoft has 16-year experience in developing software for healthcare and knows how to create a telemedicine application for safe and convenient care delivery.

Our Customers Say

We engaged ScienceSoft to build an Android app that complements our web-based platform for our patients. They advised and successfully lead the way from end to end through the technical challenges and considerations with development of the app. We have also engaged them to introduce a few enhancements to the app and would certainly consider ScienceSoft as a technology partner in further software development initiatives.

Justin Turner, CTO, Chiron Health

Roles Required for Telemedicine App Development

Sourcing Models of Telemedicine App Development

According to HIPAA, if you opt for outsourcing any development activities, you should sign a Business Associate Agreement with a vendor having access to PHIs (protected health information) to ensure data security, solid encryption methods, security practices documentation, and emergency protocols.

HIPAA-Compliant Clouds ScienceSoft Recommends for Telemedicine App Development

Based on our successful telehealth applications development projects, we suggest you choose a HIPAA-compliant cloud platform that allows secure PHI storage, processing, analyzing, and sharing.

Telemedicine App Development Costs

Costs to build a telehealth application vary depending on the following factors:

• Type of a telemedicine application (web, mobile, desktop).
• For mobile telehealth apps: the number of supported platforms (iOS, Android).
• Number and complexity of features (e.g., adding remote patient monitoring functionality will highly influence the cost).
• Number of user roles (e.g., patients, doctors, administrators).
• Telehealth application performance requirements (e.g., an expected number of simultaneous appointments and sessions).
• Necessary data storage capacity.
• Number and complexity of integrations with relevant healthcare IT systems (e.g., EHR, practice management software, LIS).
• Telehealth software integration with remote patient monitoring devices.
• Scalability needs.

Here are sample costs for telehealth software development (excluding infrastructure costs):