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In your doctor's office, clinic, or other medical center, you enjoy the high-tech organization system that handles everything from scheduling to secure record-keeping. However, from a patient point of view, the process of managing appointments, treatment, and ongoing care can cause frustration because of limited access. A mobile app for doctors' appointments is the perfect solution for both medical professionals and the people who need your care.
Expectations for on-demand healthcare services continue to grow. If you create a doctor appointment online app that offers convenience to patient users, the overall customer service and satisfaction will skyrocket.
This article covers everything you need to know for effective doctor appointment app development.
- Why You Need a Mobile App for Doctor's Appointments
- Six Key Features for Your Medical Appointments App
- Top Doctor Scheduling Apps
- Stages of Doctor Appointment App Development
- Business Matters With Apps for Doctor's Appointments
- How Much Does It Cost to Develop Medical Appointment Software?
Why You Need a Mobile App for Doctor's Appointments
Medicine remains on the cutting edge of innovation and technological advancements. You have a responsibility not only to use the latest equipment and most effective treatment options but also to provide options for care management that patients want.
When you make a doctor booking app, you provide convenience, professional responsiveness, and time and cost savings.
Look at things this way. As a medical professional or leader of a healthcare organization, you are in the business of satisfying consumers in a much more important way than in other industries.
You need to stay competitive in order to create the best patient experience possible. With over 1.7 billion people using health-related apps in 2017 and the global healthcare app market expected to increase more than US$200 billion by 2024, you cannot afford to get left behind.
Public Health Threats Increase Mobile Healthcare Demand
With the spread of Covid 19, telehealth and mobile medical services have helped provide needed care to patients without increasing exposure risk. While things like symptom monitoring may not be a part of your app design, the ability to contact doctors and schedule appointments helps.
These things reduce risk because they keep affected people out of waiting rooms. They also provide distance care and peace of mind for quality services.
Six Key Features for Your Medical Appointments App
If you want to provide maximum benefit for all patients, incorporate these key features when you build an appointment app. They represent what patients look for with the convenience and security of mobile healthcare management.
Full Profile Creation
People who use the program need a way to securely save their information so they do not have to input it every time. When you make a dr appointment app, focus on the end user more than your business needs. A profile section should include their name, address, contact information, insurance, and preferred doctors or locations.
Doctor and Clinic Information
Any medical app should include complete and up-to-date information about available physicians and locations for in-person appointments. Make the search simple and robust. Include doctor education, experience, and specialties. Share nearby clinics and medical centers with maps and parking information.
Calendar-based Scheduling
Let patients schedule their own appointments with a calendar that updates in real time to always show availability. This should include guidance for time limits for different types of checkups and treatments.
Distance Healthcare Consultations
Telehealth options work for some physicians. When you make a doctor booking app, consider adding more than just a scheduling component. If online consultations are not suitable for your type of care, still consider adding a communication element to your doctor's app.
Online Prescription Management
Inform users of necessary information about their prescription drugs including potential interactions, dosage instructions, and potential side effects. The ability to fill prescriptions over the Internet with local pharmacies that deliver offers amazing convenience.
Many other potential doctor appointment app features exist. The ones you ultimately incorporate depend on your treatment styles, specialty, and the maximum benefit to your patients.
Top Doctor Scheduling Apps
Multiple medical appointment scheduling apps already exist on the market. While they work well for many healthcare patients and professionals, they lack the custom options you may prefer for your own business. When you have control over feature development and branding, the people who use the app feel more connected to their physician directly.
If you want to join the list of successes, build a doctor booking app specific to your office, clinic, or team.
These examples of popular online doctor apps give you an idea of the possibilities. They also hint at what problems to avoid when you create a doctor booking app.
Practo
The Practo doctor appointment and consultation app offers a variety of benefits to both doctors and patients. However, because they are not specifically aligned with one medical center or doctor's office, they may have difficulty with real-time information.
Pros
- Includes medical history feature
- Opportunity to have free consultations
Cons
- Issues with unavailable doctors
- Limited options for communication and customer service
ZocDoc
The free ZocDoc medical app helps people find doctors that take their insurance, schedule appointments, and get information from a variety of specialists. Providers using this app have complained about payment issues.
Pros
- Search an extensive list of doctors with many filters
- Scan insurance card to find accepted providers
Cons
- Inconsistency with insurance plans
Appointfix
From a doctor's office perspective, Appointfix provides convenience with online scheduling. This program is available for use with any medical center or healthcare office. While it offers some basic branding ability, a custom solution may work better for your patients.
Pros
- Patients can pick available appointment times
- Doctors' offices send reminders
Cons
- No telehealth possibilities
- No specific office, clinic, or medical center control
Stages of Doctor Appointment App Development
How do you create a powerful medical scheduling app with all the features your patients need? Unless you have technical software experts on your team, hire a professional firm like Techexactly to build doctor appointment app and take care of both front and back end development for you.
Project Strategy and Estimates
Planning a successful doctor appointment app takes more than picking out features. The entire process starts with an in-depth consultation about the business or organization's needs.
This also includes what you want to provide for patients. Everything gets weighed against the budget to make sure it is workable.
Creation of UX/UI
All the capabilities offered by the programming mean very little if they are not delivered to the end-user in an attractive and intuitive way. Both designers and technical developers work together to create a user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) that make people want to install the app on their phone.
App Development Process
Hire a development team with the experience and knowledge necessary to not only create a great app but make it comply with all AppStore and PlayStore rules. They handle creation so you can concentrate on providing quality medical help to people who need your care. This part of the process usually takes longer than any of the others.
Quality Assurance
After the tech team finishes building, the quality control and assurance step makes all the difference in releasing a high-quality and glitch-free product. These tests not only look for issues but also optimize speed and usability. For best results, QA involves inspection for security weaknesses, too.
A Successful Launch
All the amazing features in the world will provide no benefits if you cannot market the medical booking app effectively. Telling your patients is the first step. Other successful healthcare application marketing methods include:
- Pushing the app on your doctor's office or medical center website
- Advertising on app stores and healthcare business directories
- Sending out an email to patient lists
- Sharing essential information on social media
- Tell existing users to share the news with their followers, family, and friends
Business Matters With Apps for Doctor's Appointments
Your goal when you make a doctor scheduling app is to provide major benefits to patients. However, that does not mean you should ignore the possibility of increased revenue or reach for the medical business itself. An amazing app can give you more than a convenient way to fill your office hours.
Monetizing a Medical App
Developing and operating an application for doctor appointment scheduling costs money. Recoup some of your investment by earning through the app directly.
- Commission earnings from referred doctor fees
- Paid advertising displayed during app operations
- Fee-based telemedicine consultations
- Web or directory-based inclusion online with app listings
- Membership options for additional services or information
Other Business Benefits
Why stick with old-fashioned methods of scheduling appointments that lead to wasted time and frustration? When you give patients a way to handle their own care schedule, you can move away from excess office staff and complicated systems. Real-time calendar syncing and updates minimize the potential for errors and increase efficiency.
To put it simply, your medical practice will benefit when you make a dr. appointment app because it shows patients how much you care about their satisfaction and convenience.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop Medical Appointment Software?
An estimate of the overall cost begins with knowing how long it takes to create a medical app.
From start to finish, the process to build a doctor scheduling app takes a lot of time because it has a lot of steps and complexity. The more features you want, the more hours needed by the programmers in the tech team.
A rough estimation of creation covers anywhere from 300 to 1000 hours of development and quality control testing. The large discrepancy comes from the wide range of possibilities in medical appointment app creation.
The final number of hours influences the overall cost in a big way. While different professional developers charge various amounts per hour, expect to pay a premium for quality work. Additional charges may apply depending on the intricacies of the features you want, any changes made in the finished product, if you want the app to work on different platforms, and the used resources and assets.
All these costs and potential charges should appear in the estimate the developers give you at the start of the project. Most often, they work things into their hourly rate. Therefore, if they charge $50 per hour and it will take 600 hours complete, expect to pay $30,000 for the finished software.
Conclusion
A mobile app for doctor's appointments provides many benefits for both patients and see healthcare professionals and offices that use them. Rather than attempting to fit your needs into an existing program, it makes sense to hire a professional development team to create one specifically for your medical company.
Wouldn't you like to give your patients the convenience and security of managing their own appointments and medical treatment options?
When you create a doctor booking app, you provide these benefits and more. Choose the precise features that will attract the most attention and users. Understand the growing interest in self-directed care and the desire for online access to appointment scheduling, medical information, and telehealth options. In the end, the program you provide helps both them and you realize essential goals. Explore our blog for more in-depth information about app development and more. In your quest to develop a unique and effective doctors' appointment app for your company or organization, turn to the experts at Techexactly for help. Contact us with your specific needs or to engage our services.
