How to develop a telemedicine application
The COVID-19 pandemic has already transformed the health tech services landscape in a way that neither the reach of smartphones nor wearable tech has managed to do in the last few years. Patients and doctors alike, affected by the quarantine, have embraced telemedicine as the technology to keep them healthy and on top of things. The virus has forced all to up their tech game, and virtual care is no longer just to pander to millennials.
Telehealth has opened the door to new possibilities in which health tech providers may extend their coverage and leave a bigger impression on the population with immediate results. It holds the promise of mitigating the impact of the lack of supply of healthcare professionals and diminished access to healthcare services. Elders with chronic diseases, underserved communities, and other at-risk sections of the population, along with the digital-savvy younger crowd, a vast population is already adopting and coming to rely on telemedicine. Meaning, companies working on telemedicine solutions will have to address another set of complexity. You will have to build a telemedicine app that is equally well understood and navigated by various target audiences.
You will have to have the following basic features on your telemedicine app in order for your app to deliver complete telehealth services. Depending on whether you continue building a full-fledged telemedicine app or start with a minimal viable product (MVP), there will be different features in your app.
An MVP version of a telehealth app needs to provide users with just enough to turn virtual care into reality, the bare-bones features. Let’s briefly go through this essential functionality.
Appointment scheduling
A patient scheduling tool or an appointment tool so people can book appointments with their chosen provider.
Secure video calling
This is the most crucial service your app must offer. Providers and patients need to see and talk to each other in real-time, securely, which is where HIPAA compliant messaging and video conferencing come into play. Visual cues play a big role in identifying signs of illness. The video needs to come with low latency and be of high quality.
Voice-only calls
Some people don’t want to show their faces and prefer to communicate incognito when it comes to psychological problems. The app can offer a voice-only call feature for these purposes. It provides a secure channel for people who feel embarrassed to talk about their issues to get qualified assistance.
Patient Profiles
A patient enters their name, address, sex, age, medical history, and other crucial data required to start the treatment process to create a profile.
Backend database
You will need a secure repository of patient information, labs, medical history, and imaging if you are building an app for neurology. This will also handle user authentication.
Peer-to-peer chat
Patients and providers should have the ability to send messages to each other to exchange information after, during, and before a call. When not able to call, this becomes a useful tool for healthcare providers to give written instructions and reach their patients. Moreover, due to interruptions in network connectivity or differences in pronunciation, information that can’t be easily understood during a call can be noted down by the patient.
Advanced feature set:
You can start adding features that bring more comfort to patients and healthcare professionals and further improve the quality of care when you decide to go beyond MVP.
Group chats and calls
For a quick, on-the-spot consultation, video calls, and group chats are needed to let the doctor add their colleague to an ongoing call with the patient. To review lab test results, doctors can also hop on a group call.
Integration with EHR
For any healthcare organization, accurate patient history is a must. This should go without saying. The ability to sync patient info gathered directly at the time of consultation to an EHR system will save med personnel a lot of time.
E-prescriptions
To expedite the process of prescribing meds, a telehealth app can incorporate an e-prescription component.
VR for Telepsychiatry
With a virtual reality enabled setting that helps build trust between patients and specialists, mental health sessions can be enhanced.
Mobile payments
You might have to integrate a payment gateway to make the process of joining a call for patients as seamless as possible. Patients that way will be able to pay for the services right in the app before a call. To bypass Google/Apple commissions, a lot of telehealth apps implement this functionality using a web view.
Integrating with peripheral IoT tools
Some medical specialties can take advantage of connecting a telemedicine app to a medical device as in teledentistry, with the use of intraoral cameras.
Built-in Chatbot
As a help desk alternative and for triaging simple cases before a call, Chatbots can be an excellent tool.
Integration with GoogleFit and HealthKit
It helps to integrate a telehealth app with Google’s GoogleFit and Apple’s Healthkit to ensure doctors have a complete understanding of a patient’s condition. Such services supply all relevant patient health data.
Module for medical assistants
Many advanced telehealth apps do include a separate UI for nurses and other medical assistants that can join the call to update notes, health data, and everything else that doctors and patients could find helpful.
Medication tracker
The application stores every prescription that a doctor writes & sends notifications to help patients remember to take their medicine.
Nova Telehealth is already well on its way to being a trusted resource in health tech. Now is the best time to invest in telemedicine app development, as this is still a competitive niche, and the demand for such services is growing and will continue to rise.
