Doctor Appointment Booking Apps: Benefits, Features, and Costs

Do you have any medical institution and want to have your own appointment booking app for your patients? Are you a doctor and find it difficult to manage and track your patients? Then you should go digital and take the help of any reputed app development company for your own appointment booking app.

M-healthcare is on the rise these days and more and more institutions are going the digital way. At present, there are about 240 million Americans that own a mobile phone and the number is expected to enhance at an exponential rate in the coming years. Healthcare service providers are trying to capitalize on these mobile app trends and they are creating new and innovative mobile apps to connect with their patients and other users. Recently, the HealthWorks Collective published some facts and statistics on the use of m-healthcare apps. According to this study:

There is a lot of variety of mobile healthcare apps for patients and doctors all over the world. Also, keeping track of your health, recovery, medical dose, as well as consulting the doctor is now more convenient with mobile apps.

In addition, a recent forecast for mobile healthcare applications shows a predicted growth of 60$ billion by 2020. Moreover, many new aspiring mobile developers are developing apps that are related to healthcare. Plus, for making mobile healthcare apps, you need to have a unique concept and possess good programming skills. Furthermore, various mobile app development outsourcing companies make it easier.

Have a look at some top players of the doctor appointment mobile app category

As you know that ZocDoc and Practo are the two major appointment booking apps for doctors that are ruling this category. But, there are also a plethora of other mobile apps that are performing equally well in this industry. Here are some top players in this category:

There are various factors that have devoted to getting these mobile apps the best in appointment booking class. But one of the most prevailing factors present in these kinds of mobile apps is the different sets of features that are present in their applications.

Features of on-demand appointment booking mobile app

First of all, before creating any healthcare mobile app, your main focus must be on the end-user. Here are some of the following characteristics that should be there in your mobile app:

Healthcare mobile app development must contain UI/UX design, analytics, quality assurance, backend, and app development. Furthermore, it should be integrated and maintained with the EMR system totally depends on the concept of the app, or it should be considered as optional.

The top features of an appointment booking mobile app for doctors and patients are a must-have for healthcare brands seeking constant growth from all the involved stakeholders. Have a look at some common features and functionalities of such kind of app:

Doctor and Clinic Search

The next feature on the list is the search option. The patient side of the user group should be given the option to search for doctors and clinics based on various criteria such as expertise, clinic or doctor’s name, waiting time, travel fees, etc. Choose to do a comprehensive search filter list to provide the best services to users.

Stakeholders’ Profiles

Creating a doctor and user profile is a primary part of a doctor when setting up an appointment to develop a healthcare application. The user profile will be drawn around users’ names, ages, gender, and basic medical data such as height, weight, blood type, hereditary diseases, and more. Your doctor’s profile will contain details such as their area of ​​expertise, clinic location, appointments, names of the concerned hospital and travel fees.

What we recommend is to treat the user’s profile page as a personal health planner and profile page of doctors as a section where each and everything is present — their specialty, grade, photo, clinic picture, etc.

Tracking

It is one of the important features of any healthcare mobile application. It allows users to track heart rate, blood pressure, monitoring glucose level, calories, pulse, etc. Also, doctors are able to keep track of patient’s health progress remotely.

Scheduling

It another important feature of the app that allows doctors to work with calendars, managing appointments, or schedule medicine intake time. Also, scheduling can be applied to other healthcare apps like sleep apps or personal organizing healthcare mobile apps.

Payment

Payment is also another important feature in mobile healthcare apps that allow patients to pay for various medical services and insurances. Plus, the healthcare app with a nice user experience and online payment is a good thing to do.

Some other features of mobile healthcare apps are push notifications, appointments, reviews, photos gallery, and much more.

Geo-Location Based Search

MVP is another location-based function in addition to the facility list (minimum viable product), which enables patients to search for doctors and clinics in their area of ​​residence or work. You can also leverage the functionality of Google and Apple Maps to add a location-based search feature to the mobile app to book a doctor’s appointment.

The main benefit of this feature will be that the applicability factor for your healthcare mobile application will enhance manifold and at the same time your application session for your doctor’s appointments. There are various App Developer in Dubai who can put this feature in your mobile app.

Appointment Booking

One of the key features of your app, as it is called, is to find doctors. The appointment feature you added should be related to a very simple interface, where the process of finding a doctor completely and verifying the timeline to book an appointment is pretty hassle-free and easy.

You should also give the patients the option to set a future date based on their availability, while doctors are given the task of accepting or rejecting the appointment in real-time as per their availability.

Doctor Review

Rating & review of doctors is the only feature that will create patient participation in your mobile app to find doctors. For your healthcare application, you need to make sure that you have lots of genuine reviews and reviews for fellow doctors.

The situation with the Doctor’s Appointment app is that patients only click on the profiles of doctors who have a good set of assessments and reviews that support them. Therefore, if they find profiles that do not include ratings and reviews, they most likely will not interact with these doctors and ultimately with the app as a whole.

In addition to giving mobile phone users the option to view and provide reviews, you also have to give them the option to add the status of the clinic for other patients to view in order to add media.

While these are features that will be part of proprietary features or MVP features, there are many other features that can be added in the future regardless of your application, when MVP proves usability to your app.

What is the cost of doctor appointments booking mobile apps?

The cost to develop an appointment app for doctors and patients depends majorly on its functionality which means the features and functionalities you want to have in your mobile app. The app can also be pretty simple including only doctor appointment booking with text messaging or it can be a big-scale product with a plethora of features. In addition to this, it depends on your main goal and also on your target audience.

Let us try to find out how much an appointment booking app for doctors and patients costs. For your convenience, we will some estimates for the mobile apps with a plethora of sets of functionalities:

Type #1
Your mobile app should have the below-mentioned features: In this specific case, the price of mobile app development will be around $300K Type #2
Your mobile app should have the below-mentioned features:

• In-app reminders
• Online appointments
• Map for finding doctors in your specific location

Python, Node.js, PHP, Java, .NET
400+ In this specific case, the price of mobile app development will be around $50K

Type #3
Your mobile app should have the below-mentioned features:

Provider directory with the database of verified and trusted doctors
Audio, video or text consultations
In-app automated billing

Python, Node.js, Java
600+

In this specific case, the price of mobile app development will be around $100K

For more specifications about mobile app development costs, you can contact mobile app development companies in Dubai. They will assist you with the exact cost as per your specific business requirements.

Let’s Wrap Up

So here you saw various benefits of having a doctor appointment app. Also, you read about various features that an app possesses to get positive reviews from its users. You also get to know the overall cost of such kind of Android app development. One of the primary factors for the success of your mobile application is to choose right Mobile App Developer in Dubai, as there are many Android and iOS App Development Company there and you should choose the right one that can meet your specific appointment booking app needs and can deliver your app in the stipulated time frame.

Originally published at https://www.xicom.ae on March 17, 2020.