Global medical centers have switched to adopting virtual care technology considering the convenience of the patients and doctors. A doctor appointment app is required to schedule outpatient appointments to streamline routine tasks with automated text reminders, predict appointment no-shows, reduce outpatient cancellations, avoid unused time slots, avoid overbooking, regulate drop-in consultations to avoid overcrowding, analyze performance by appointment history, and balance the workload among medical staff.
Such applications help medical providers address their finance, motivational challenges, and operational challenges, which eventually turn patients into loyal customers and healthcare brand advocates. Therefore, let’s look into the prerequisites to building a patient-doctor communication app!
Categories: Which Types Of Apps Are Best For Doctors?
- Medical Reference Apps: To enable doctors to refer to medical journals about upcoming experiments, treatments, diseases, drugs and other advancements in the medical field.
- Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) App: To enable doctors to connect with patients who are unable to come for treatment in hospitals.
- Diagnostic Tests App for Preventive Care: To enable patients to schedule lab tests, avail discounts, and packages, consult with physicians on their medical condition and consult with dieticians at their convenience.
- Chronic Disease Monitoring Apps: To monitor chronic medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cancer etc.
- Reminder Apps for Medicine & Goal Tracking: Reminder apps for medicine work in close coordination with medication adherence apps that keep reminding patients about the dose timings, refill reminders, drug interaction, history, tracking blood sugar levels, managing step count, and heart rate.
- Healthy Lifestyle Maintenance Apps: To enable users to adopt a healthy lifestyle – walk, sugar intake, calorie count, and sleep.
- Fitness and Yoga Apps: Online fitness studios for all the elderly and crippled people, who are not able to attend physical sessions or physiotherapies due to certain medical conditions or age.
- On-Demand Mental Health Apps: To enable texting, audio & video messaging, daily reminders with positive messages, encryption of patient’s data, daily progress tracker, and activities that improve mental health. It also makes therapists available at all times. It lets in sessions and webinars improve mental health. It makes options available for the patients to join support groups, with in-app rewards to motivate the patients.
Functionality: How Does It Work And What Issues Does It Solve?
Such an application synchronizes with patients’ and doctors’ calendars, send them reminders on upcoming things to do, and upcoming visits, and notifies them about their time slots, cancellations and upcoming bookings. Patients can schedule appointments without the need of standing in a queue or making a phone call. They ease the process of arranging patient-doctor visits. It allows patients to access the healthcare providers of their choice. The doctor appointment app stores all the entries and makes hospital management access it all.
If you have this app, you can call a doctor or clinic of your choice. It also finds a clinic close to you, makes payments for consultations online, and addresses specific health needs.
Features: What Should Be There In A Doctor Appointment App?
- Search categories and Filters
- Get to know about new medical procedures, new diseases, new drugs
- Get to access research and medical articles
- Get to access test results
- Online and Offline Appointment Booking
- Admin Panel for mHealth App
- Doctor Search results with Filters
- Map Integration
- Reminders & Notifications
- Online Video Chat Hosting
- eBilling & Payment Gateways
- Doctor profiles
- Search for a doctor
- Book and manage appointments
- RemindersPayments
- Online consultations
- Cloud-based e-records
- Medication tracker
- Health tips and insights
- Doctor directory
- Smart search
- Real-time chat
- Uploading Documents
- Patient Profile
- Reviews
- Calendar
- Reminders & Notifications
- Live chat with support
- Payment integrations
- Telemedicine
- Electronic Health Record Systems (EHR)
- Electronic Prescriptions
Benefits of Online Doctor Booking App
- It attracts more patients
- Bookings can be done upon the doctor’s availability and the patient’s convenience
- No more to and fro phone calls
- It makes reminders, cancellations, and rescheduling easy
- It reduces absenteeism
- It improves patient and doctor satisfaction
- It delivers a premium experience to patients
- It lets patients search doctors by location, reviews, and insurance
- It lets patients utilize wellness benefits
- It lets patients book appointments with a click
Technology Stack: What Are The Basic Building Blocks Of A Doctor Appointment App?
- Front-end development: Angular, ReactJS, React Native, Javascript, CSS, HTML5
- Back-end development: Node.js, Python, PHP; Database – Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB
- Video Call: Agora Video Call
- Notification: Firebase Cloud Messaging
- Multiple payment modes: Braintree, PayPal, Stripe
- Mobile development: Android – Java, iOS – Swift
- Map integration and user location tracking: Google Maps API, CoreLocation, MapKit
- In-app calling and messaging: Twilio
- Push notifications: Twilio, Push.io
- Cloud environment: Google, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Steps to Build a Doctor Appointment App
A customized online doctor appointment system will require you to set your doctor’s database. You will have to decide if you have to consider multiple clinics or have to work around just one clinic. Is it accessible via APIs?
Next, once you set up all the data sources, create a prototype of the doctor on-demand app. Incorporate the feedback about UI/UX from your medical staff and test users.
Third, create a scheduling engine by utilizing scheduling APIs/SDKs like Scuity, Timekit, and Onsched, besides simple plug-in integrations to beautify the calendar interface.
Fourth, you will require both web and mobile versions of medical staff scheduling software and create APIs to integrate the app with medical records.
Fifth, to abide by HIPAA Compliance, factor in a secure architecture that is aligned with HIPAA regulations, PHI data encryption, SSL connections, HIPAA as a Service cloud platform, HITECH Act, and GDPR regulations.
Sixth, the Quality insurance phase follows coding. It should cover unit testing, functional testing, regression testing, integration testing, stress testing, system testing, smoke testing, alpha-beta testing, and user acceptance testing.
Seventh, App release and maintenance
Cost to Develop Doctor Appointment App
It comes up to 15,000 – 50000 US Dollars.
Wrapping Up
Doctor appointment booking must include these features, functionality, methods, and technologies to make these design specifications work. It acts as a great mediator between patients and doctors, saving a lot of time and effort for appointments. Mobile app development agencies have come up with state-of-the-art outcomes that are replacing interim record-keeping that does not meet regulatory standards.