We recently shared our comprehensive guide to telemedicine development, covering topics like app types and modern technologies. However, one question that we want to explore further is the cost of telemedicine software. The expense of creating a telehealth solution may seem intimidating at first, but it’s actually quite manageable.
Today, we want to focus on the factors that influence the cost of telemedicine software and ways to keep those expenses low. Using cases from JetBase’s portfolio, we’ll offer practical development tips. Our guide aims to highlight the flexibility of telehealth development and show you ideas for managing your budget.
Why Telemedicine Software is a Worthwhile Investment
The easiest way to understand why the cost of telemedicine software is well-justified is to look into these solutions’ impact. Studies show that telehealth is a viable way to extend medical coverage to rural areas, giving better healthcare to millions of people. Using software for patient-doctor interactions pretty much eliminates the limits that distance imposes.
It’s also evident that telemedicine removes the danger of infectious diseases, both for doctors and patients. Instead of spending time in a waiting room, possibly risking infection, patients can get a consultation from their homes. This is an essential benefit for the elderly and immunocompromised patients.
Now, onto perhaps the most critical point and the reason why telemedicine will be relevant in the long term. Research shows that telemedicine saves money for healthcare institutions and patients alike. The former benefit from streamlined operations and more cost-effective data processing. The latter saves on commutes and, with regular check-ins, prevents more serious and costly health issues.
This means that the initial telehealth software cost will quickly pale in comparison to the savings your solution generates. Couple that with the fact that your product will help to protect people’s health and you can clearly see the value of telemedicine. It’s a niche that mixes profit and real social impact.
Plus, telemedicine is still growing, using new technologies to expand its reach. Thanks to advancements in AI, these apps can already handle a lot of the standard tasks that doctors deal with daily. A company that takes care to invest in forward-thinking features can capitalize on the expanding market and easily recoup the telemedicine platform cost.
Analyzing the Costs of Telemedicine Software Development
It’s no secret that the cost of developing an app in any industry is quite flexible. While we’ll cover the factors influencing telemedicine software cost below, we want to discuss how that cost is formed here.
Features and Complexity
The most apparent thing that determines your app’s cost is how complex it is. To put it in perspective, telehealth apps can range from $20,000 to $200,000. That huge fluctuation is largely based on the features that the app will offer.
When you plan your solution, it’s important to consider each feature's proportion between initial cost and return. For example, video calling may add a hefty chunk to the budget, but it’s also quite essential. AI-enabled features cost a pretty penny but could help your app win over users. Focusing on features that bring a lot of value, even if they cost quite a lot, can effectively manage your app’s final budget.
Choice of Platform
There is a delicate balance between adding support for more platforms and sticking to your budget. On the one hand, each extra platform will open your app to a wider audience. On the other hand, though, the cost of crafting a native app might be higher than the profit of this new audience. This is why analyzing the market beforehand is crucial and helps make the right decisions during development.
Generally, most telemedicine software aims to have at least two native apps — for iOS and Android. These are the bare minimum you need if you want a proper share of the market. However, some businesses may find it profitable to expand to Windows and MacOS to attract more clients.
UI/UX Design
Investing in your app’s design is one of the most cost-effective aspects of development. It’s easiest to draw in new users if your solution looks nice and runs smoothly, after all. However, this cost-forming point is about more than just the visuals. You also need to do extensive testing to ensure that the users never feel lost in the app or confused by some of its features.
If you do things right, most design expenses will go toward iterative testing. This helps give your app a broader appeal and ensures the features you’re investing in will work properly. It may take a bit to get the design just right if you want it to be usable, pretty, and reflect your brand. However, JetBase’s experience shows that it’s worth it every time.
Future Maintenance and Updates
While it’s not part of the initial development, it’s vital to account for future work done on the app as part of the budget. This will help you understand how to structure expenses, as well as lay out the roadmap for the first months or years of your app’s lifecycle. Ideally, you want to have a steady stream of updates, adding new features and fixing bugs.
Maintenance is also essential, as it helps ensure your app is secure and running properly, even as your user base scales. Some of this is alleviated if you use a cloud platform like AWS, which helps avoid bottlenecking. However, a diligent team will always keep tabs on the app’s performance and do regular work to keep things ticking along.
Ways of Managing Telemedicine App Development Costs
So, you know how the cost of telemedicine software is formed, but how to decrease it? JetBase has faced this question during our telemedicine projects, and we’re happy to share our tips. Here is what you can do to keep the cost manageable.
In addition to the cost optimization tips below, we also suggest downloading our "Healthcare Software Development Cost: Guide 2024". It contains the most popular features, their cost, and development time. This will help you to better navigate the process of planning and choosing a software development team.
Adjust App Complexity
As mentioned above, the number of features and their complexity correlates directly with the final cost. If you want to slash the budget, it makes sense to look at which planned features are disposable. While we don’t advocate cutting things down to just the basics, certain ambitious functionalities, such as VR support or real-time data analytics, can objectively be too costly.
Thus, focus on what your team is skilled at, as well as features that help turn a profit. If your market research shows high demand for AI-powered chatbots, they can be worth the investment. Plus, if your devs are very familiar with a certain technology, they can likely implement it while keeping expenses reasonable.
Work with a Core Team
While there is a temptation to expand your dev team to both speed up delivery and have more expertise on deck, it’s not always a good idea. If you scale back the team and go for a simpler app, you can cut down a large chunk of the budget. Besides, you simultaneously make it easier to manage development.
Set Up Partnerships Early
We’ll cover the full benefits of hospital partnerships in monetization below, but they’re also relevant here. You can partner with a network of medical institutions to guarantee some clients for your solution early on. This helps forecast your initial revenue, and you can even route initial contract payments toward development.
Reduce Integrations
Adding third-party APIs and smart device integrations can bring a lot of value in terms of functionality, but it also often ends up being the more expensive aspect of development. Consider which integrations are essential to keep your app running smoothly and collecting necessary data. Perhaps it might make sense to limit them to the bare necessities to keep the cost down.
Outsource Sensibly
One of the easiest ways to lower the cost of telemedicine software is to outsource the project. The ideal scenario is finding a reliable vendor with experience in the medical industry. It’s best to look for teams in Europe, where quality and price are perfectly balanced. Consider teams with lots of relevant experience, like JetBase, and you won’t go wrong.
Must-Have Features for Telemedicine Apps
Earlier, we talked about “trimming the fat” to keep the telemedicine software cost low. So it only makes sense to highlight the absolutely vital features for telehealth solutions. Both to give you an idea of what your MVP needs and highlight how powerful these apps are even at the basic level.
Patient-Doctor Contact Methods
This category is broad, as the actual feature depends on your solution’s purpose. Not every type of telehealth app will require video calling, but they all benefit from a simple in-app chat. Similarly, an AI-powered chatbot that can relay a doctor’s orders or file patients’ feedback is invaluable. You don’t want to leave something as simple as communication out of your app, regardless of its type.
Data Storage, Analysis, and Processing
Your solution should be able to host images and videos, allowing patients to send in visual confirmations of their complaints and doctors to store and access medical histories. Plus, you should implement AI-powered image analysis if possible. It can help digitize written records and analyze patients’ scans and X-rays.
Tiered Access and Encryption
Consider this part of the compliance measures your app needs to take to comply with regulations like HIPAA. You will need to limit accessibility for patients’ medical histories and personal data, as well as actions like diagnosing, prescribing, and even communicating with patients.
This works both vertically (doctors get more privileges than nurses and other staff) and horizontally (only a doctor assigned to a patient’s case should be able to view their information and interact with them). Plus, any data your app processes or stores must be encrypted securely to protect it from cyberattacks or leaks.
Personal Accounts
This one might seem self-evident but it bears saying — your users, patients and doctors alike, need the ability to sign up for the app and control their data on it. It helps make healthcare better as patients are then able to add personalized information such as illness history. Besides, the account will be the place to reference doctor’s orders, check prescriptions, and track their recovery.
How to Monetize a Telemedicine App
No matter how high the cost of telemedicine software gets, being able to recoup it with monetization makes it justifiable. Thankfully, the field of telemedicine offers several flexible ways to make your money back. We’ll go through a few of the core monetization schemes to give you some inspiration.
Fee Per Use
This is one of the simplest approaches to monetizing telehealth solutions. You simply establish a percentage of each fee paid in the app and collect it. It’s most often used specifically for patient-doctor apps, as it’s easy to include your fee during payment processing. This is also one of the most reliable approaches to monetization - as long as there are patients, you will have your cut.
In-App Ads
Anyone who has launched an app before knows this method. Whether you opt for small banners or full-screen ads, the approach is simple — you get income from advertisers, and users get a fully free app. That is, of course, unless you choose to combine ads with another monetization method. On their own, ads might be a bit volatile, but couple them with another method and you get a stable source of profit.
However, there is a small problem with using ads specific to healthcare apps. The best and, thus, most profitable ads require targeting. This can clash with certain regulations that cover patient data, potentially jeopardizing this method. Before you consider it, it’s best to consult someone who already has projects in the field and knows how to approach data collection here.
Subscription Model
You can mix in a premium subscription to go along with your app’s free version. High-quality features remain behind a paywall, while the essentials are free for all. The one drawback of this method is that it results in a higher telemedicine platform cost due to the premium subscription requiring really unique and exclusive features.
It’s also possible to create a premium-only application that offers only paid services. However, this method works for established companies that can attract a large pool of clients. For a smaller company, offering a generous trial period is a good way to expand your reach and get more users. In this case, people can test out your functionality and see for themselves why your app is worth it.
Partnerships and Promotions
This approach works especially well for telemedicine apps intended for medical staff use. You can start an exclusive contract by offering them unique functionality that can save time and money. That way, the medical institution pays for access to your solution while getting all the benefits from it.
Alternatively, even for patient-facing solutions, you can promote the services of particular healthcare providers, as well as specific medications. An advertising contract can be quite lucrative from a monetization standpoint, making this a strong choice for free apps. If you amass a large user base, finding an advertiser who wants to work with you will be a piece of cake.
How Can JetBase Help You with Telemedicine App Development?
We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the intricacies of crafting telemedicine apps. However, there is no amount of theory that can replace practical experience. JetBase has spent a decade in this market, learning the ins and outs of the niche. Our team focuses on keeping telemedicine app development cost down while delivering a rich set of features.
For example, take a look at our recent telemedicine app. This platform serves as a direct line between patients and doctors, with video calling, live chats, and monitoring capabilities. Features like that require quite a bit of bandwidth and processing power, making them quite costly.
However, this isn’t the first time JetBase worked with video streaming, giving us insight into the tech. Thanks to that, we kept the budget manageable, using AWS as a cost-effective way to reinforce the system and ensure stability.
Another telemedicine project of ours, a monitoring app, highlights our variety of skills. JetBase created two native mobile apps, each running on a sprawling network of interconnected APIs. Since the app collects a variety of health metrics, we established IoT support to instantly sync that data with the application. Despite this, we focused on keeping our telemedicine platform cost low to fit the client’s needs.
One important aspect of this collaboration is the continued support we’re providing to the project. Expanding the work beyond an initial release helps adapt it to the ever-changing market with new features and updates. Moreover, long-term collaborations are more cost-friendly overall, making it easier to run major projects with no budget concerns.
The reason we can provide these varied, flexible development services is simple. It’s all down to our years of experience, structured teamwork, and commitment to polishing our projects. Get in touch now to plan out your app development and recruit our team.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that telehealth software cost is very flexible and depends on the features you want and the vendor you work with. With that said, we want to stress that you don’t ever have to compromise your product’s quality for the sake of savings. Thorough planning and a skilled team will guarantee a high level of quality without unnecessary expenses.
Thanks to this guide, you already know the baseline features of a telemedicine app. Add your own spin on the classic structure and let your devs deal with the technical side of the project. You can reach out to JetBase for a consultation on planning your budget and choosing extra functionality for the app.
Plus, our team can handle the development and deliver your telemedicine solution on time and within the budget. Using our knowledge of the telehealth niche, we’ll advise you on the optimal tech stack for the job and offer ideas to make your app more competitive. If you want top-notch quality and efficiency, contact JetBase now.
