Healthcare providers now use medical software with state-of-the-art features that offer a whole bevvy of healthcare services and products. You, too, can craft an inroad into the booming healthcare software market through a custom software development partner.
The mobile ecosystem is in flux. Constant development and augmentation is key to remaining ahead of competitors and increasing customer engagement. Generic and dated mobile applications are no longer sustainable. The answer? An overhaul through custom software development.
Medical service providers should select the right healthcare software provider who knows about the recent fads, techniques, feature requirements, and user expectations in the healthcare space. Armed with the appropriate healthcare tech, organizations can help enhance capabilities in terms of remote patient care through healthcare applications.
Why you need a healthcare software development organization
1. Better Patient Experience
Tech assets built by a dedicated healthcare software development partner will ensure quicker patient checks with lesser desk work. The data is documented electronically and sports the option of easy prescriptions.
2. Simple Scheduling and Maintenance
Healthcare software can adapt to perform scheduling and maintenance easily and solves overbooking issues through error-free scheduling.
3. Simple Billing and EHR
Billing is quite a laborious task in the healthcare business. Having a tech asset that could automate billing procedures could assist you with further automation of the processes pertaining to the EHR model.
How to choose the perfect software development partner
So how do you make a choice? Consider these points-
1. Analyze their experience
You need to dissect their specialized topic and their experiences. Only experienced healthcare software sellers can understand and satisfy client needs.
You also need to assess their certifications to gather further information about the healthcare software developers skillset and capabilities.
2. Examine their portfolio
Have a look at their past projects in the healthcare arena and check if they align with your requirements. Examination of their market presence and brand reputation is advised.
Here are things to search for in the portfolio of a prospective software development partner:-
- Kinds of healthcare software they have built previously
- Customers they have served-names, strength, and worth
- The intricacy of tasks they’ve handled
- The sort of experience they give to the clients
- Developments they dominate in
3. Research Audits, reviews, and Ratings
Discover what clients say about the partner you are planning on choosing. Break down and analyze their surveys and testimonials. Understand how the healthcare software development partner in question manages its customers and caters to their requirements.
4. Analyze their processes
Additionally, make sure to understand their process thoroughly. Every development partner has a unique process for delivering healthcare software development services. The process must comprise of the following:
- Requirement analysis
- Scope freezing
- Product prototyping
- Product development
- QA and testing
- Deployment
- Post-launch support
5. Assess the Cost
Budgetary constraints are a reality. Ensure that you communicate your product development financial strategy with your potential healthcare software development partner. Get some information about the cost to build the product and research their cost to quality proportion of their output of previous projects.
6. Understand their Engagement Models
A. Turnkey Engagement Model
It is otherwise called the fixed value model. This is an optimal model for:
- Transient tasks
- Undertakings with a distinct scope
- For allocating testing tasks to the developers
B. Time and Material Basis Model
A customer consents to pay a recruited software development company depending on the time the partner spends on developing the products and other applicable assignments. The model is appropriate in the following situations-
- Hazy requirements or details,
- A drawn-out project with dynamic estimation
- The customer needs greater flexibility
C. Dedicated Hiring Model
The dedicated hiring model allows you to enlist dedicated teams from the software development partner with costs based upon the number of hours spent by the developers on your task. This model is most appropriate for:
- Clients that wish to augment their in-house team
- The hirer is searching for greater flexibility
7. Discover What Does the Healthcare Software Development Company has to Bring to the table Post-launch
For a healthcare SaaS startup, there are chances of coming across issues, and remember that the market continues to change as far as client demands are concerned. This means that you may have to redesign your product or need to add a few highlights to it.
The ideal healthcare software development partner offers maintenance and support services even post-launch.
Before you enlist a partner, remember to ask about the help and support services offered by them and their cost.
8. What is the Team Structure they offer
As a rule, a product development team comprises of:
- Project manager
- Requirement analyst
- Software developer
- UI/UX designer
- QA tester and engineer
9. The capabilities of a Healthcare Software Development Company to Assist You in Expanding Your Software’s Features
The primary objective of creating healthcare software is to expand the effectiveness of your tasks, automate them, upgrade them, and wrap things up: offer a superior patient experience. You should look at the capability of the development partner by checking out testimonials and other vetted reviews.
Factors that Determine the Cost of Developing a Healthcare App
Healthcare app development costs depend on several factors. One needs to consider platform-based app development, front-end and back-end development, level of QA deployed, and production expenses.
On average, building a Healthcare app with basic features costs anywhere between USD 1000-USD 5000. The fact that Healthcare sports capabilities of creating engaging and appealing apps that are robust and responsive, and highly effective enable developers to drastically reduce the app’s time-to-market, resulting in significant cost savings.
Generally, an estimation of the Healthcare app development project’s budget can be calculated as the number of hours required to build, test and deploy the app X the price the development partner charges per hour. However, this estimation needs to consider the following features-
1. Features
The features that the commissioning entity wants for their app are prime factors that decide app development costs. While some features can be created with minimal effort, thanks to Healthcare’s widgets, other features may require weeks of work before the feature is built and seamlessly integrated into the app. For example, an app with a share function may take around 8 hours of development time while a filter app may take over 100 hours to build.
Integration of Video/audio call support, text chat, GPS tracking, and payment gateways are examples of expensive feature additions.
2. Partner Location
The cost of development varies according to geo-location. While a developer in the US can charge up to 200 USD an hour, a developer in the Philippines or India can offer comparable quality at a fraction of the cost. Given that living costs in countries differ, developer salaries are affected, resulting in cost-effective coding services available in countries like India, Ukraine, and the Philippines.
3. Process Followed
Healthcare app development begins with the discovery phase. The client provides the development partner with a list of features they wish to incorporate and the time frame they expect the app to be completed. The development partner then replies with their own estimation and post discussion and strategizing; the budget and deadline are decided.
In some cases, this conversation would take barely an hour or so, while in other cases, just reaching an agreement could take days or even months.
4. Additional Expenses
App development costs do not stop once the app is deployed. When the app reaches the market, it still has to be maintained and upgraded to remain relevant and error free. Some companies offer support and maintenance packages that come at an extra cost. Moreover, the app deployment process incurs additional costs like server rent, design costs, and release costs.
- Server Rent
Server space is a critical requirement for an app to store user data. It is also needed to purchase server space from a reliable service provider like Amazon to reduce downtime. For example, a 24/7, 32 GB Ram, and 8-core CPU would cost USD 1650 per annum.
- UI/UX Design
Elements of design such as font color, type, and size, along with elements like BGs navigational buttons and drop-down menu design, all have varying levels of functionality, quality, and therefore cost. UI/UX development can cost anywhere between 40 to 5000 hours of effort, and this proportionally affects the app development cost
- Cost of Release
App releases on Google Play and Apple App Store come with a cost. While the App Store charges a fee of 99 USD PA, Play store has a one-time 25 UDS fee.
- Updates and Maintenance
If an app doesn’t offer updates over time, it may soon be outmoded and lose relevancy. The release of updated versions, patches, and upgrades is needed to retain users who are willing to shift to a different app the instant they feel that your app’s utility or social currency has dropped. Then comes the question of maintenance costs. These costs rise with the app’s lifetime. An average of 20% of development costs goes into app updates and maintenance.
In Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic further promotes telemedicine, e-conference and consultation, AI-powered healthcare software solutions, wellness, and other healthcare applications.
I trust this article has proven informative and has helped you understand the finer nuances of bringing a healthcare software development partner on board.
