Telemedicine Software Development in Brief

Telemedicine app development is aimed at building high-quality software for remote consultations and patient monitoring. With telehealth, healthcare providers improve care accessibility, health outcomes, patient engagement, and automate routine care management operations.

The development of a telehealth app may take around 4-8 months, which includes the time needed for requirements engineering, project planning, UX and UI design, MVP development and launch. You will need a team comprising of a project manager, a business analyst, a regulatory consultant, UI and UX designers, front-end and back-end app developers, QA and DevOps engineers.

The development cost of a telemedicine app typically ranges from $150,000 to $250,000+. The exact cost depends on the telehealth software type, complexity, user roles, performance requirements, data storage capacity, integrations, etc.

Telemedicine Apps Market Overview

The current telemedicine market is estimated at $91.2 billion. Worldwide, the demand for telehealth grows, and by 2030 the market is expected to reach $380.3 billion at a CAGR of 19.5%. It is no surprise considering that telemedicine helps effectively manage chronic and age-related conditions (e.g., mental health issues and neurological conditions). For healthcare providers, telehealth helps reduce the care costs and tackle staff shortage while providing care to more patients.

To help healthcare organizations and software product companies leverage telehealth technology, ScienceSoft develops reliable applications tailored to the patients’ and providers’ needs.

Telehealth Solutions ScienceSoft Implements

Check out the telehealth solutions we design and build and find out about the specifics of telemedicine technology in different fields of healthcare.

Telehealth for nursing care

Telehealth for physical therapy

Telehealth for neurology

Telemedicine for stroke care

Telemedicine for pediatrics

Telemedicine in rural areas

Telemedicine in primary care

Telemedicine for acute care

Telemedicine for mental health

Must-Have Telemedicine Software Features

A recognized developer of award-winning healthcare apps, ScienceSoft lists the key features for telemedicine platforms that are most frequently requested by our customers.

Visit scheduling

Scheduling, rescheduling, and cancelling of online and offline appointments, therapy sessions, etc.
Reminders on the upcoming appointments.
Automated physician referrals processing.

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Doctor-patient communication

Pre-visit patient questionnaires.
Secure video chats for online appointments.
Instant doctor-patient text messaging and file sharing.
Appointment recordings and chat history storage.

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Treatment planning

In-app access to patient profiles with medical records.
Template-based creation of a telehealth visit summary.
Template-based or manual treatment and medication plan creation.
E-prescribing of medications.

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Disease management

Daily symptoms tracker available to a doctor for further assessment.
Collection of patient vitals via smart medical devices or manual entry.
Medication intake log and reminders.
Nutrition and physical activity journal.

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Analytics

Dashboards with patients’ health state based on the appointments’ records, symptoms and vitals assessment.
Alerts in case of abnormal patient vitals or symptoms.

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Patient knowledge base

A knowledge base with self-help guides, including disease-specific articles, diet recommendations, and pre- and post-visit instructions.
General and disease-specific physical and mental exercises (in audio, video, image format).

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Billing and insurance

Instant payment processing via the connected payment gateways.
Support for multiple payment methods (bank transfer, card, web/mobile wallet, etc.).
Access to explanations of benefits.
Patient eligibility check and insurance verification (for medical staff).
Patient access to personal insurance information (for apps owned by healthcare providers).

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Security and compliance

End-to-end data encryption.
Role-based telehealth application access and identity management.
Multi-factor authentication for telehealth app users.
HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR, and PCI DSS compliance.
Data exchange according to HL7, FHIR, DICOM, ICD-10, CPT, XDS/XDS-I standards.

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Alena Nikuliak

Senior Business Analyst and Healthcare IT Consultant

If you want your telemedicine software to stand out on the market, I recommend you to clearly identify your target niche and develop advanced functionality to cater to its needs. For example, some of the customers I work with opt for VR-based online therapy programs for neurological diseases or AI chatbots to guide patients through cognitive behavioral therapy.

How to Develop a Telemedicine App: Key Steps

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.

Based on our 18 years of experience in healthcare IT, we present a generalized process ScienceSoft follows to deliver a telemedicine app.

Telehealth app requirements engineering and software planning

Duration: from 4 weeks

During the initial stage, ScienceSoft performs:

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, website, HIE platform, 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.

Project planning

Duration: from 2 weeks

At ScienceSoft, this stage includes:

Project scope identification.
Software development life cycle model planning (e.g., Agile methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, are effective for complex projects requiring team flexibility).
Budget planning.
Project schedule, iterations, milestones and KPI planning.
Software development risk assessment and a risk mitigation plan design (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 design.

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).

ScienceSoft’s tip: To develop the telehealth software faster, ScienceSoft often runs the UX and UI design stage simultaneously with the project planning stage.

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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).

ScienceSoft’s tip: When our customers' telehealth app needs early stakeholder or market validation, we usually start with MVP (minimum viable product) development. ScienceSoft develops core intended app functionality with simple UX and UI design, and then adjusts the telehealth app MVP (e.g., enhance user experience) and prioritizes developing secondary features based on stakeholder or user feedback.

ScienceSoft

Telemedicine software maintenance and evolution

Duration: continuous

ScienceSoft is ready to support its customers after the telehealth app launch, offering:

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 18 years of experience in developing software for healthcare and knows how to create a telemedicine application for safe and convenient care delivery.

Telemedicine app consulting services

Analyze your needs and define telehealth app features.
Select tech stack and design architecture.
Suggest advanced techs (IoT, AI, ML, etc.).
Guide to healthcare industry regulations (e.g., HIPAA, HITECH).
Plan telehealth app development.

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Telemedicine app development services

Elicit telehealth software requirements and draw up a feature set.
Design UX and UI.
Develop and test telehealth app.
Implement integrations with third-party software (e.g., EHR, CRM).
Launch and support the app (if required).

Outsource the development

Why ScienceSoft

In healthcare IT since 2005.
In software development since 1989.
Hands-on experience with HIPAA, HITECH, ONC, NCPDP regulations.
Working experience with healthcare standards (e.g., HL7, FHIR, ICD-10, CPT, XDS/XDS-I).
Quality management system for medical device software proven by ISO 13485 certification.
Microsoft Partner and an authorized AWS Solution Provider.
For the second straight year, ScienceSoft USA Corporation is listed among The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies by the Financial Times.
ScienceSoft became a finalist for the Health Tech Award 2022 with its laboratory diagnostics software and the HTN Now Awards 2023 in the Excellence in Remote Patient Monitoring category.

Our Customers Say

Justin Turner

CTO

Chiron Health

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.

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Patrick Pakan

Founder and CEO

AKLOS Health

I’ve had six orthopedic surgeries since playing college football and tried every major digital exercise therapy platform on the market. None of them offer the comprehensive and personalized care they claim. Thanks to ScienceSoft’s practical healthcare IT expertise, we created a musculoskeletal therapy platform that can be fully customized and reflect the needs of each program member.

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Todd Nilson

HealthPoint Plus

We worked with ScienceSoft on the refactoring and modernization of our telehealth web portal and a cross-platform patient application. During the project, we were impressed by their code analysis proficiency and in-depth knowledge of telemedicine specifics. ScienceSoft proved to be a reliable vendor with a solid healthcare background, and we recommend them to everyone looking for a telehealth software development partner.

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Common Roles In Our Telehealth Project Teams

Project manager

Creates a telemedicine app project plan and supervises it, assigns tasks to the project team, monitors delivery timing and budget, mitigates risks (e.g., lack of resources or capabilities, delays), and ensures smooth communication within the team.

Business analyst

Elicits telemedicine software requirements, outlines features, tech limitations, defines necessary app integrations with other healthcare software (e.g., EMR, practice management software).

UX designer

Designs end-to-end user experiences and interactions with a telehealth app based on the UX research, creates wireframes and prototypes, tests telemedicine app usability.

UI designer

Designs an attractive visual interface of a telemedicine app.

Back-end developer

Builds the server side of a telehealth app.

Front-end developer

Creates the user side of a telehealth app.

QA engineer

Creates a test strategy, designs, executes, and maintains test cases according to it, reports telemedicine software defects.

DevOps engineer

Sets and maintains the telehealth application development infrastructure, automates telemedicine software development and delivery, monitors telehealth application security, performance, availability, etc.

Regulatory consultant

Advises on the software architecture components, optimal technologies, development process, and project documentation management to ensure HIPAA and HITECH compliance.

Sourcing Models for Telemedicine App Development

In-house telemedicine app development

Full control over the project.

Potential delays, quality and compliance issues due to the lack of in-house experts.
All management efforts are on your side.

Turn to ScienceSoft if you are looking for help in planning telehealth software architecture, tech stack, features, or need compliance assistance.

Turn to us

Partially outsourced app development

Easy access to high-profile talents (e.g., skilled in IoMT).
Cost-effective resource allocation.

Requires highly competent in-house management.

Turn to ScienceSoft if you need technical specialists with vast experience in the healthcare domain to augment your telehealth app development team.

Turn to us

Fully outsourced telehealth app development

Responsibility for the dev process and delivery timing is on the vendor.
Access to skilled talents with necessary tech expertise.

Increased dependency on the vendor.

Turn to ScienceSoft if you need a trustworthy and driven telehealth software development vendor with 100+ successful healthcare IT projects.

Turn to us

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.

ScienceSoft’s tip: If you want to incorporate Software as a Medical Device features (e.g., heart-rate monitoring using a smartphone) into your telemedicine application, we recommend paying attention to FDA registration of your software and checking if your vendor works according to IEC 62304:2006/Amd 1:2015 and ISO 13485 standards. In its telehealth software development projects, ScienceSoft is ready to comply with the stated requirements.

Benefits of Telehealth App Development Outsourcing with ScienceSoft

Optimized costs

ScienceSoft starts with a detailed requirements analysis to reduce risk of rework in the future. Then, we work according to an iterative approach, so we can deliver the MVP of your telehealth app and tune it based on the feedback.

Healthcare industry knowledge

Relying on its 18 years of experience in the healthcare domain, ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT team plans and implements telemedicine software with a focus on the customer’s strategic goals.

Security and compliance

Following HIPAA requirements, ScienceSoft signs a Business Associate Agreement with its Customers and ensures data security, solid encryption methods, security practices documentation, and emergency protocols.

Need Help in Telehealth App Development?

Being ISO 13485-certified to design and develop medical software according to the requirements of the FDA and the Council of the European Union, ScienceSoft is ready to help you create a reliable telemedicine application with a tailored set of functions for virtual care delivery.

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Technologies ScienceSoft Uses for Telemedicine App Development

In our telehealth app development projects, ScienceSoft's healthcare IT team usually chooses the following tools and technologies to ensure secure PHI storage, processing, analyzing, and sharing.

Clouds

Cloud databases, warehouses and storage

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud Platform

Video

Streaming

Messaging and conferencing

Back-end programming languages

Front-end programming languages

Languages

JavaScript frameworks

Mobile

Telehealth App Projects ScienceSoft Is Proud of

Telehealth Chiron Mobile App Development

ScienceSoft has developed a HIPAA-compliant Android telehealth application that allows patients to book and attend online appointments through secure video communication. The app integrates seamlessly with the Customer’s existing apps (EHR or EMR, RIS, LIS).

Project details

Telehealth Software for Primary Care Practices

Telehealth Software Design and Development for Primary Care Practices

ScienceSoft designed and developed a functional telehealth and practice management solution MVP with the vital features. The solution consisted of a mobile telehealth app and a web portal for appointment scheduling and management.

Project details

Mobile Care Coordination App Development

ScienceSoft has developed an app that connects patients with their caregivers across organizations and specialties through audio and video chats.

Project details

Development of Remote Care Solution

ScienceSoft created a solution for remote patient care, which included a video and text communication app, a care team app, an app for health data aggregation from Bluetooth sensors, and a web dashboard for monitoring patients’ status.

Project details

Development of Mobile Communication Software for the Elderly and Caregivers

ScienceSoft has created a mobile communication system, which allows the elderly and their caregivers to connect through video chats across various locations, including home, hospitals, assisted living facilities, etc.

Project details

Telemedicine Drives Success of Healthcare Orgs

Florida-based Memorial Healthcare System implemented a multi-faceted virtual care program after receiving a funding of $974K following the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Three years later, the system designed 61 telehealth programs, scheduled more than 400,000 online visits, and reached 97% patient satisfaction rate.

The Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center implemented a telemedicine program centered around behavioral health needs of pregnant and postpartum women. 80% of women joined the online screening program compared to 65% of women who agreed for in-person screening. Thus, telemedicine helped reduce the social stigma and detect pre- and post-natal behavioral health issues early.

Sutter Health in California offers primary care virtually and tries to resolve a patient’s issue via a video visit before scheduling an in-person appointment. After implementing the program, Sutter Health provides 90% of care services using telemedicine.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) offers comprehensive telestroke and teleneurology programs to community hospitals. Now, over 95% of consultation requests are answered within five minutes. Clinicians in remote hospitals report that MGH neurologists’ consultations improve their decision-making and allow treating 71%-88% of telestroke patients locally.

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):

From $150,000

For healthcare organizations (with 1-50 doctors).

From $250,000

For healthcare product companies.

Get to Know the Cost of Your Telehealth App

ScienceSoft is ready to calculate the cost of your telemedicine application and provide its ROI.

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Monetization Approaches for Telemedicine Apps

When deciding on the app monetization strategy for telemedicine software products, ScienceSoft’s experts suggest the following approaches:

Pay-per-appointment

Users pay a pre-agreed appointment cost (including a fee that goes to the software product company). The cost may depend on the appointment type or a physician’s qualifications.

This is the most popular monetization approach.

Subscription-based approach

Users pay a subscription fee to the software product company. The company has medical staff on board or employs contractors to offer telemedicine services.

There may be various subscription plans (e.g., weekly, monthly, or the maximum number of consultations per period).

Gala Batsishcha

MD, Healthcare IT Consultant

If you opt for a subscription-based approach, you can start by offering a short free trial period to the new users. For many healthcare startups, it proved to be a viable customer acquisition strategy.

About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is a US-based international healthcare IT consulting and telemedicine app development company. Our 34 years of experience in software development and 18 years of expertise in healthcare IT helps us create telemedicine applications aimed at providing reimbursable care remotely.