Know 7 Factors That Impact Healthcare Application Development Cost in 2024

Mobile app technology is bringing a significant transformation in almost all industries, the healthcare industry is not untouched either. Healthcare apps have made managing disease better and guiding people including patients, medical staff, and healthcare professionals with medical supply delivery, online consultation, diagnostics, appointment scheduling, etc. This is why medical app development services are thriving. The future of healthcare application development looks bright with an estimated growth from $8,348.44 billion in 2023 to $8,963.64 billion in 2024 at a CAGR of 7.4%. Add to this, the advanced technologies, from artificial intelligence to wearable devices, brought up an era of unprecedented possibilities, leading to not only enhanced patient care but also a surge in the potential for healthcare app developers.

However, despite the immense advantages and potential the healthcare apps bring, the focus is on a critical aspect of healthcare application development – the cost. After all, businesses must innovate in ways that provide more equitable and sustainable healthcare – not for some, but for all. But that brings extra costs to the app development process. There are varied parameters affecting the cost of building a healthcare app that meets your business goals. So, where to begin? In this blog, we’ll go through crucial factors that may impact the healthcare app development cost. Additionally, how to reduce the development cost and still build fast, secure, and highly functional apps.
Ready? Let’s dive in!

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Healthcare Mobile App?

There are a lot of reasons that impact your healthcare application development cost. Factors such as UI/UX features, advancements of your app, or even the location of your application developers, shape the development cost. However, to give you an estimated cost of developing a healthcare app, it ranges somewhere between $100,000 to $500,000. Additionally, the types of healthcare apps also impact the development cost. So, if you’re wondering what is the cost to build a mobile app for healthcare, here’s a Healthcare app development cost breakdown for different apps:

• Medical Networking Apps: $30,000 to $60,000
• Healthcare Billing Apps: $40,000 to $90,000
• Telemedicine: $50,000 to $200,000
• ePrescription (eRx): $40,000 to $80,000
• Fitness Apps: $60,000 to $300,000
• Wellness Apps: $60,000 to $160,000
• Health Monitoring Apps: $50,000 to $100,000, or more

Top 7 Health App Development Cost Factors Explained

We’d reiterate that these costs are only estimations and the real cost may differ based on many other factors. For now, we’ll offer a Healthcare app development cost breakdown of the 7 factors influencing healthcare mobile app development costs:

1.  Feature Complexity

The level of complexities or advancement of features directly impacts cost. Basic features like appointment booking may range from $5,000 to $10,000 while integrating advanced functionalities like AI-powered diagnostics can significantly increase the cost to $50,000 or more.

2. Tech Stack Selection

Developing native apps for iOS or Android does offer high performance but can be costlier, typically costing $15,000 to $30,000 per platform. Cross-platform development, where a single codebase works for both, can be more cost-effective $10,000-$20,000 but might have limitations in functionality.

3. UI/UX Design

One cannot do without engaging, highly intuitive, and user-centric designs in healthcare applications. Designing such an app may vary from $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the intricacy of the design and the desired look and feel of the app.

4. Development Team Expertise

If you decide to outsource medical app development, the location and experience of your application development company significantly impact hourly rates. Costs can range from $50 per hour for offshore developers and nearly $200 per hour for premier development firms in the US or Europe.

5. Ongoing Maintenance & Support

To ensure smooth operation, businesses must set aside some budget for post-development maintenance. You should consider approximately 15-20% of your initial healthcare mobile app development cost annually is going to be spent on ongoing bug fixes and updates.

6. Regulatory Compliance

Healthcare apps handling sensitive patient data require adherence to regulations like HIPAA. Legal fees and security audits to ensure compliance can add $5,000 to $15,000 to the overall cost.

7. Third-party Integrations

Integrating wearable devices or Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems is essential for offering personalized medical services but adds to additional development costs. The cost associated with this will depend on the complexity of the integration process and may vary between $800 to over $2,000.

Other Hidden Healthcare Application Development Costs to Consider

• Functional Costs: SMS or push notifications, geolocation, or payment gateways, require significant expenses.
• Admin cost: The development of an admin panel and custom APIs to manage the app’s operations, content, and user profiles.
• Infrastructural costs: The payment for server, CDN, and integrations like Redis.
• Software & QA Testing: To have a flawless app with low performance or security-related issues, you need to take of these costs also.

Also Read: Does AI in Healthcare Still Require Regulations?

Get a free cost consultation of your health application development and project estimation from our software development company tech experts!

Top 5 Strategies to Cut Down Healthcare Application Development Costs

Here are 5 steps you can take to reduce healthcare app development costs:

Prioritize and Focus on MVP:

Don’t straight-up dive into building an entire application from the get-go, specify the set of main functionalities that allow you to deliver the largest value for the end users (patients or healthcare providers) in the version with the most simple and useful implementation. Doing so gets you a chance to test the market, make different impressions, and then put those changes into effect, with no need to invest heavily in the advanced features.

Embrace Agile Development Methodology:

This approach focuses on dividing a whole task into smaller parts and ready feedback loops. This enables you to course correction and allows prioritization of functionalities based on users` insights and might eliminate extra functions that could elevate healthcare application development costs.

Explore Cross-Platform Development Options:

The native application provides better performance but also considers cross-platform framework, there are options such as React Native or Flutter. These frameworks let you develop a single code for iOS and Android, eventually leading to lower development time and costs because the development period is shortened.

Leverage Pre-built Components and APIs:

Open-source healthcare applications often build on many pre-developed software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs), which employ functions such as scheduling an appointment, user authentication, and telemedicine. Implementing such can accelerate the development process and help cut down the resources needed to create everything by yourself from scratch.

Outsource Strategically:

This is the most effective way to lower healthcare mobile app development costs. Not only do you get global talent to work on your project but also they possess the expertise of all SDLC teams under one roof, from developer, and designer to QA testing services, freeing your SDLC team. Thus, you can redirect your attention to core business activities and, therefore cut down on the costs, without compromising on the quality.

Final Thoughts

The rise of technology has surely reshaped the way healthcare services are being delivered. Health applications services or healthcare apps are prime examples. However, quality healthcare services will require secure, highly functional, and agile mobile apps to resolve the pain points of both patients and healthcare professionals. It is a little complicated to develop a highly effective and efficient healthcare mobile application without breaking the bank! But it’s not impossible. The cost remains the main concern for many healthcare application development companies as they usually wonder what is the cost to build a mobile app for healthcare, so they can minimize the losses and hire people to develop their application. Hopefully, this blog has helped them find answers.

In this blog we discussed the top 7 Health app development cost factors that may influence your medical app development cost, additionally, we also shared a few tips to reduce the burgeoning development cost. With this insight, you can streamline your development process, make informed choices, and potentially bring your healthcare app to life within a more manageable budget. However, to make mHealth application development simpler for you, we recommend you consult an app development company. The company’s experts possess experience in creating mobile healthcare applications that align with our client’s vision and budget.

Author

Ashish Aggarwal

Head of Delivery