It is no news that healthcare mobile and web apps have taken over the modern healthcare industry by a storm by introducing personalization in healthcare. From monitoring your personal health to targeting and achieving customised fitness goals, there is a mobile app available for everything. This shift has made patients more informed and connected with their medical professionals than ever before in the history of the healthcare industry.
Healthcare mobile applications have seen a continuous rise in demand in recent years. COVID-19 served as yet another reason for an increase in successful healthcare app demand by spiking an increase the need for remote patient monitoring and healthcare.
In fact, healthcare mobile app usage surged by over 65% globally between 2020 and 2021. This led to healthcare providers switching to telemedicine apps and digital services in an attempt to maximise efficient healthcare delivery and minimize in-person visits. The number of medical apps has expanded to over 337,000 applications as of reports in 2024.
Source: data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-use-and-payments/medicare-service-type-reports/medicare-telehealth-trends
The healthcare mobile app market is valued at $114.18 billion in 2024. It is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 42.2% between 2025 and 2030. This growth is largely due to the explosive increase in smartphone users, rural internet access and the need to effectively serve healthcare in remote areas.
The evolution of the healthcare industry towards mobile applications has made it possible for a lot of less fortunate people to access medical services in a simple way. The industry’s future seems to lie in further advancement of remote treatment and healthcare technologies that also includes smarter and more efficient healthcare applications.
Sources: Allied Market Research; Markets and Markets; Transparency Market Research; BCC Research; Roland Berger © Statista 2018
Healthcare mobile apps can be valuable for businesses in the medical industry as they can effectively improve workflow efficiency. This directly translates to a reduction in operational costs and an increase in productivity and revenue.
It also helps streamline tasks like appointment booking, communication, billing, staffing, maintaining electronic health records and other aspects of daily operations. They help customize patient engagements with minimal efforts and increase customer retention by catering to the needs of today’s tech savvy and informed patients.
Automation through healthcare mobile applications cannot be ignored. Various tasks that require an active workforce like billing, scheduling, managing, data collection, communication, record management and more can simply be automated through customised medical apps. Moreover, notifications and reminders can help reduce unnecessary costs, improve health outcomes and reduce human errors. It’s practically a win for all.
There are a large number of professional healthcare app solutions currently available and they can be categorized into various types. They benefit medical professionals and support healthcare providers by giving them remote access to the patient from across the globe. Lets take a look at the main types that a majority of the mobile healthcare apps fall into.
These are the most common types of health monitoring mobile apps that are available in the market. These platforms allow patients to remotely book appointments with healthcare providers and healthcare professionals and connect with them via audio visual mediums.
This increases accessibility for remote regions of society that lack medical and healthcare institutions while also helping those with mobility issues.Kanda software, the healthcare app development company, has engineered a customized telehealth mobile app platform for a globally recognized healthcare provider that introduces AI in modern healthcare. Kanda software has been providing healthcare application development services since 1993, contact us here!
People with chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma and others need constant monitoring and patient engagement. This section of professional healthcare apps are specifically designed to help deal with chronic disease management with features like medication reminders, educational resources, symptom tracking and timely alerts.
These types of healthcare mobile apps help their users manage stress, depression and other similar conditions. Some of the features of these apps include meditation programs, mood trackers, sleep monitors and sometimes access to licensed therapists online to avail their healthcare services.
These are the common health tracking mobile apps that promote a healthy lifestyle. They help assist their target audience in achieving their fitness goals by tracking their nutrition, activity and other real time data through integrated wearable technology.
In order to efficiently treat patients, it is important for them to consume their medication as prescribed and complete the due course. Medication adherence health mobile apps provide timely reminders and information on which medications to take and what time. This improves medical adherence and improves patient outcomes. Kanda software has ample experience in healthcare mobile application development and has been involved in creating user-friendly mobile apps that provide such support and help avoid overdosing and underdosing of medications. Check out some of our solutions!
Healthcare mobile app development is not a simple code and assemble task. It requires minute attention to detail in terms of technical mechanisms, regulatory compliance, user experience and overall problem solving features. The single most important part is user privacy.
Healthcare apps are expected to be compliant with regulatory bodies and their standards such as the HIPAA protocol or the GDPR in order to protect sensitive patient data from becoming prey to a data breach. Lets explore some of these healthcare barriers and solutions in app development.
Adhering to regulatory compliance is the most important aspect of mobile app development for healthcare. Since a majority of health apps handle sensitive personal and clinical data, the developers are required to abide by a variety of global, national and industry specific standards.
In the U.S. any application that stores or handles information considered as Protected Health Information (PHI) such as medical records is mandated to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Probability and Accountability Act).
Included in this are standards for encryption, authentication, audit trails, breach reporting etc. Medical app developers are required to follow HIPAA’s Privacy Rule and Security Rule from the planning stage of the healthcare app development.
Whereas in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), makes user consent compulsory along with the right to data deletion, and strong protection for personal data. Regional examples include, PIPEDA in Canada and DPA in the UK.
Your healthcare mobile app falls into the medical device category if it provides diagnostic or treatment tools like dosage calculators, BP trackers or other health monitoring features. This will attract a requirement of approval from regional authorities like the FDA or the MHRA. It is always important and useful to build regulatory planning into your mobile app development for healthcare.
Apart from the standards discussed above, healthcare apps often have to align with standards like
Aligning with these standards have their own benefits, like adopting the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) allows your app to communicate easily with systems like EHRs allowing better access to data and patient care.
Aligning with compliance isn’t just a box that can be ticked off in custom healthcare app development. It needs to be applied right into the design of the application. Non-compliant healthcare apps can attract large penalties and damage to your reputation. Investing in a legal compliance expert is always a great idea to make sure you stay compliant right from the start.
Security is one of the most important aspects of healthcare mobile app development process. Patient health records are classified as highly sensitive information types, making them a hot target of various cyberattacks.
Any data related to medical history and patients needs to be securely encrypted in transit as well as at rest. HTTPS with TLS needs to be used for communication and all stored data needs to be encrypted on the backend servers and the user devices. Any databases that are storing PHI should be designed to resist plain-test exposure.
User authentication must extend beyond just strong passwords in medical app development. MFA’s i.e., multi-factor authentication such as One-Time Passwords, or biometrics help largely reduce unauthorized access risks in your mobile app development. Other measures like RBAC (Role based access control) need to be used to allow only authorized users to view or edit sensitive data.
Security testing should be built into every stage of mobile app development for healthcare. This includes:
Common vulnerabilities to guard against include SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure API endpoints, improper session handling, and poor data storage practices on mobile devices.
Since mobile health apps are often used on mobile devices, consider features like:
These protect against unauthorized access in case a device falls into the wrong hands, which is a concern for app development companies .
Audit logs should track user access and data changes to comply with regulations and support forensic investigations when needed. Users need to be informed on the data collection and usage policies along with options on data control like deleting or exporting their data. This will allow you to meet data transparency requirements.
Security is not a one-time implementation—regular updates and audits are crucial to address emerging threats. Think of security as a continuous journey that earns patient trust over time.
The success of your healthcare mobile apps will rely on how appealing it is to both patients and medical professionals. A confusing user interface with a long learning curve in your healthcare mobile app development plan will drive users away, highlighting the importance of simplicity in mobile app development for healthcare
Your healthcare app development project should recognize a wide variety of users:
Defining and understanding your user’s unique needs and requirements is the first step to building useful and effective interfaces.
Healthcare app developers should consider simplicity as it can go a long way in increasing a user’s trust. Simple things like translating uncommon medical terms into plain English, especially for user-sided features like replacing “LDL > 130 mg/dL” with “Your cholesterol is a bit high—let’s talk to your doctor”, make the user comfortable and improve patient outcomes. In-App navigation should be clear with vibrant and visible colours and fonts along with a logical flow. Following standardised guidelines in your healthcare mobile app development cycle like the WCAG will help users with audio-visual impairments or other limitations.
In today’s interconnected healthcare mobile app development landscape, no app is an island. Integration with existing health systems—from EHRs and pharmacies to health insurance portability and wearables for remote patient monitoring—is essential in mobile app development for healthcare.
A patient healthcare app should allow users to access lab results and notes from their actual medical records. A provider-facing healthcare app should enable a healthcare professional to update EHRs in real-time. A medical app might sync with Apple Health or Google Fit. All of this requires robust integration frameworks.
The FHIR standard is becoming the backbone of healthcare app interoperability. Many EHR vendors now offer FHIR-based APIs, allowing apps to pull structured patient data securely.
For legacy systems still using HL7 v2, middleware solutions can help bridge the gap. If working with a specific health provider or hospital, investigate their IT environment early—some may offer secure APIs, while others may require custom integrations.
Fitness trackers, glucose monitors, heart rate sensors—all generate valuable health data. A modern healthcare app should have the capacity to pull and display real-time data from these sources. OAuth 2.0 and secure token systems can manage authentication for third-party integrations.
It’s not just about connecting systems—your app must also fit into existing workflows. For clinicians, ensure that app-entered data is reflected in the EHR to avoid redundant documentation. For patients, simplify how third-party data syncs so users don’t have to enter it manually.
It takes a well calculated step by step process to convert a great idea into a working, safe, usable product. Given below are some steps to follow.
Amazing ideas in software development take shape with research. You will need to list down all the basic information about that application such the target healthcare market, target audience, your user base, user personas, the problems it will solve, how can it enhance patient care and more. You will also need to talk to on field professionals and patients alike.
The next step would be to thoroughly scan the market for similar products that might have been on the same idea as yours. If you do find similar products, do look into the points that they missed, the opportunities that they left behind and the problems that have been reported about them. You will also need to understand if your application will require regulation approvals from regional authorities such as HIPAA or GDPR.
Once the functionality of the healthcare system is mapped out, the next step is to start working on the design. This is the look and feel part of your mobile app development for healthcare that will define the way in which your users perceive your healthcare app.
Initiate by creating a central dashboard screen and everything else revolving around it. This makes app navigation each and allows the user to easily maneuver through the app without getting frustrated.
At the onset of the design stage it is a great idea to try and simultaneously create a minimal working prototype to test out the features in a better way before moving towards initiating the creation of the minimum viable product or the MVP.
Now it’s time to build your healthcare app. Initiate work on the front end (what users see and interact with) and the back end (servers, databases, and systems that keep everything running).
Healthcare application developtment is always done in stages. The important features go first. This is known as the agile approach and makes it easier to test parts of the app as they’re built and make improvements along the way.
At the same time, legal and industry rules identified during the research phase should be complied with in healthcare application development process. Compliance experts should review the app as it’s being built to make sure everything is on track.
After the software development is completed, it needs to be tested for bugs, medical data safety, security, reliability, scalability, ease of use, design friendliness and more. This happens in stages. Initially, the features are tested to be working as expected. Once verified, the app is tested by different types of users in order to gain feedback.
In the next stage, the healthcare app is tested on lower than average internet connections and slow devices to test and increase the adaptability of the application for all kinds of users in all kinds of situations.
The cost of developing your healthcare mobile app depends on the complexity and depth of your application, contact us to get a quote!
Depending on the depth of your application, 4 to 6 months for simple apps and up to 12 months for more complex applications.
Simple applications do not require approval but those offering diagnostic tools, trackers or aiding medical decisions would require clearance.
Creating a mobile healthcare app is a difficult and lengthy process. It takes a lot of careful planning and precise execution. Every step, from ideation, to design and development, testing and finalizing, takes its own time. Each step plays an important role to help create an app that is safe, useful and applicable in various situations. Healthcare apps save lives. If you would like to develop your own health application, be sure to contact Kanda Software.
