How to Develop an On-Demand Doctor Booking Application?

One of the possibilities that can change the connection between a patient and a physician is the ability to schedule a consultation with a physician online quickly. Patients may become upset with doctors who find it challenging to manage their duties, plan patient visits, and maintain track of their calendars. 

The doctor appointment app development market is growing swiftly because of all the benefits it provides. From 2018 to 2027, the global healthcare market is expected to increase at a CAGR of 24.7%. The size of the market for medical planners is steadily expanding, indicating that more clinics are discovering digital ways to address this problem.

Statistics for Medical or Healthcare Apps

When considering current marketing strategies, developing a mobile app for your organization seems obvious. However, before investing in creating a doctor on-demand application, you must look into factors that will help you create the proper implementation. Your principal focus should be developing innovative programs that meet the diverse needs of your users.

Based on a survey in significant US cities, hospitalized new patients should wait 24 days before booking a doctor’s visit. Due to the lengthy wait, one in three people goes to the emergency department instead of seeing their chosen doctor.

• 82% of the users agreed that technology should be developed to make accessing medical coverage as simple as calling a cab or placing a meal order.

• 77% of patients said they would rather text their physicians.

• 69% of patients would instead plan virtual appointments with their doctors than in-person ones.

The average price of creating a doctor-on-demand app varies depending on several factors and conditions. The cost of a doctor appointment booking app is one of the additional aspects of establishing an e-solution software. Several of the components are the position of the software developers and designers, the accessibility of apps on different mobile devices like Android and iOS devices, complexity, and other aspects.

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Primary Features of Doctor Appointment Apps

After reading about the advantages and revenue models for doctor appointment management software, you determine that the moment has arrived to create an appointment scheduling application. There are a few considerations you should make.

Any significant medical application must include essential healthcare functionalities that address the target audience’s challenges. Similar built-in functionality should be present in an appointment scheduling app to satisfy customer requirements. Let’s identify them now:

1. Scheduling

A scheduling function must be considered during the construction of the doctor appointment app. Patients may schedule an appointment with a doctor using this essential function. With only a few taps, a spot in the doctor’s schedule is freed up for a visit to a hospital or medical centre.

2. Clinical Profile

For clinicians to be equipped for every scenario, personally identifiable information should be included in the patient accounts. Capabilities for scanning and transmitting documents would be helpful. Doctors must analyse patients’ medical and demographic information.

3. Physician Profile

The patient must be given the option to select the most appropriate healthcare provider before scheduling a meeting. A doctor element must be created with the express purpose of generating and modifying a profile. Information on the doctor’s area of expertise, practice area, patient testimonials, and the cost of a visit under various insurance plans should all be readily available.

For physicians, real-time statistics and reporting on the state of their medical practice would be fantastic. If the doctor wants to offer advertising and promotional materials, they may also use this as a platform.

4. Reviews

Patients can offer feedback and assist others in reviewing suggestions using the scoring system in the online scheduling program for the clinic. This app functionality can aid other customers in selecting an appropriate clinic or medical practice expertise.

5. Calendar

A health appointment app should have simple online and offline scheduling features that always function as intended. It will help if you have a fully functional calendar and functionality for tracking meeting status.

6. Notifications & Reminders

You should ensure that appointments are always attended. Therefore, your medical planning tool should also provide fully functional appointment email, smartphone, app, and push alerts.

7. Live assistance through chat

Patients can undoubtedly know the functionality of in-app chat. Doctors must be accessible via HD video systems with chat support and round-the-clock assistance.

8. Integrations with payments

Various payment methods are needed to connect the medical professional and the patient regularly. Using a credit or debit card, checking account, or e-wallet to easily manage bookings and process payments immediately. Your users will have more freedom and can pay for planned appointments more safely through the app with the help of a reliable payment platform, including Stripe, Paypal, Klarna, etc.

9. Telemedicine

For the treatment of patients who reside in remote locations, take into account incorporating telemedicine capabilities. The creation of the medical appointment scheduling app must have the capability of conducting online appointments using built-in chat or streaming video. More people who cannot visit the facility for whatever reason will be available to get your services.

 Additionally, WebRTC and VidRTC technologies have become beneficial for supporting video conferences with EHR interaction. They are entirely GDPR and HIPAA compliant and can be used as the foundation for virtual meeting alternatives.

How to Build a Telemedicine App Like Halodoc?

10. EHR

Integrating EHR (Electronic Health Record) Software into creating your appointment scheduling system is also essential. Physicians can view patient records online thanks to this function. Additionally, it boosts medical professionals’ output and enables hospitals and practitioners to provide safer medicines.

11. E-prescriptions

Software used to arrange medical appointments must allow doctors to prescribe necessary medications and include receipts in the app immediately. Customer can purchase their medicines from a nearby drugstore or another location.

12. Medical advice

Patients will value the doctor appointment web application more if this choice is enabled. Consequently, individuals may examine the test data their doctors have uploaded and observe how their therapy is progressing.

Benefits for Hospitals and Healthcare Systems of the Doctor Appointment Application

Patients may select their favourite specialist and digitally reserve their hospital visit using a healthcare appointment scheduling app. Creating a doctor appointment management app takes time, work, and money. On the plus side, the finished solution offers the physicians, customers, and front counter staff significant advantages in ease and pleasure.

1. Simplified Billing

Healthcare software substantially speeds the billing by automating the necessary procedures. Patients may pay bills using the integrated payment options, and healthcare administrators can do so via a mobile app. Whenever is an excellent opportunity to examine and check the invoicing record?

2. Improved Patient Comfort

According to recent studies, 57% of customers use the internet to identify health professionals, and 43% choose to make an appointment digitally. With effective communication channels in place, current generations will undoubtedly love the new approach to the health centre and are more inclined to visit more frequently. People with busy schedules who have little time to consult will also value medical applications. 

3. Increased Administrative Effectiveness

A recent poll revealed that:

• 60% of those surveyed make online consultations with service providers.
• Being placed on a wait during a phone contact, according to 42% of participants, is a significant time waster.
• In addition, 17% of participants need help scheduling a consultation during the hospital’s off-hours.

Software for scheduling doctor’s appointments increases performance in two different ways:

• By shortening the appointment-making process
• by lessening the quantity of effort front desk staff must make when an appointment is made.

4. Minimised No-Shows for Appointments

The US health service loses $150 billion annually due to patients who don’t attend appointments. The front receptionist of the hospital might only sometimes possess time to contact each client and remind them of their visits or rearrange everything. However, technology can do so; every patient using the app receives a notification about their consultation. If for whatever reason, they are unable to attend, they are always free to reschedule at a later time.

5. Easy Scheduling

The general doctor booking system allows users to schedule consultations at any time. Depending on the psychiatrist’s accessibility, patients can book the defined slots and communicate with them at the appointed time. If there is a difficulty, the doctor or consumers may, in extreme cases, postpone the appointment and recommend a new time. Smartphones are essential to the whole client purchase experience in the contemporary digital world.

6. Reduced Human Errors

Sadly, front desk staff frequently make manual mistakes while managing patient and account statements. Automated testing makes it simple to avoid financial losses caused by errors or redundant records.

Since more and more consumers expect all information to be accessible at the click of a screen, consumer tastes are expanding along with using mobile devices. The COVID-19 outbreak significantly influences the rise of doctor scheduling software. They were forced to stay in their houses and encouraged social seclusion during the outbreak. Users seek efficient ways to communicate with doctors and medical professionals to obtain the proper remedies.

Essential Steps for Building an Appointment Scheduling Software for Your Clinic

There is no magic solution to get the desired outcomes right away when building a medical office scheduling system or an app. Concerning the difficulties you can have, we advise you to focus on the actions that will simplify this process simpler for you.

1. Ascertain a Ready Database of Doctor

Before starting the process of developing an on-demand scheduling appointments app, consider your final result. Here, you will realise that your software is a platform and that your main products are the physicians and the solutions. So it’s crucial to check that you have the goods and a trustworthy database of licensed doctors. At this point, you choose if you’ll collaborate with particular hospitals and how to use the medical API to retrieve their databases.

2. Examine Commercial Scheduling Applications

The hardest part of building a doctor appointment booking app will be creating the programming engine. If you construct it from the beginning, that is. However, choosing an off-the-shelf programming API, including those offered by Acuity, Timekit, and OnSched. You may significantly accelerate the creation of bespoke mobile apps by utilising these or comparable APIs but consider that your decision will affect the UI.

The issue with timetabling APIs and SDKs is that they offer little freedom with a calendar’s appearance and feel. But you can still utilise these features to give your app a distinctive design. It will only suffice to integrate a plug-in, though merely.

3. Carry Out User Analysis

You should gather information from critical users before developing the UX of an online medical appointment software. You will better understand your target market’s key demographic and psychological traits. You can precisely predict how your customers will engage with your software by examining the data that has been received.

4. Create And Evaluate a Prototype

Create images for each screen in your medical visit app in the following phase. You may test each aspect of your interactive prototype after it is complete. The design and implementation of online appointment scheduling systems inside the UI / UX will be simpler to navigate due to feedback from your medical staff and potential customers. You may accomplish this by using any available prototype tools, like Invision, Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch.

5. Organise App Features

Think about the functioning of your process to ensure that all factors are factored into the equation at once. Also, ensure they are executed in such a high-quality and dependable application. This will help you create an interface for your physician appointment scheduling application that is straightforward and user-friendly.

6. Make The Navigation Simple

Any product’s design process must start with a clear navigational plan. Your app will cover matters of life and death. Offering simplicity and quickness of use to physicians and clients is crucial. Access to all information needs to be rapid and straightforward. Keep in mind that effective navigation enhances the customer experience.

7. Make Acceptable Colour And Font Selections

The selection of graphic components during the creation of your application’s user interface is another phase that needs careful consideration. When creating a system for scheduling doctor appointments, you must rely on a simple structure and minimalist design.

Your creative team should know that the colour scheme should be cosy and soothing. Additionally, typography must be user-friendly, enabling users to discern text swiftly and quickly locate the data they want.

8. Maintain HIPAA Compliance 

HIPAA prevents the disclosure of health information to unauthorised parties and establishes severe penalties for violators. Ensure your IT team can adequately protect the app and is aware of the regulatory compliance requirements for the healthcare industry.

Please contact Langate if you wish to take advantage of the specialists’ knowledge of compatible computer programmers. We completely encrypt healthcare information for GDPR and HIPAA compliance and to protect its security.

9. Verify

You can only create a health appointment app without extensively testing it. In real life, each programming sprint is followed by the quality management phase, which starts at the same time as coding. Final testing, therefore, comprises unit tests, additional testing, vulnerability scanning, and coverage of all software functions.

10. Release and Maintenance 

The final stage is publishing the software so customers can schedule an appointment with a doctor. The narrative is not over after uploading mobile applications to the application store and migrating the online dashboards to a “live” server, such as one just on AWS (Amazon Web Solutions) platform. According to user input, you may be required to update the program frequently to accommodate new mobile Operating system versions and improve its performance.

Designing and developing an online doctor booking system may take time and effort. Hence, consulting specialists is a good idea before getting started.

Five Examples of Popular Doctor Appointment Booking Apps

Therefore, with the advantages of developing an online appointment scheduling system in mind, let’s consider developing this technology as an expenditure from which you could quickly profit. Look at well-known applications for scheduling doctor appointments, like Doctolib, Practo, and ZocDoc HealthTap.

You’ll observe the numerous advantages these applications have for patients and healthcare professionals utilising them. It’s hard to overlook the opportunity to make money off of medical on-demand services by using appointment software. Let’s take a closer look at each illustration.

1. ZocDoc

ZocDoc is a platform where doctors advertise their expertise. And customers schedule appointments with doctors. It was founded in 2007. To assist patients in finding providers in more than 50 specialities, ZocDoc employs AI. Patients may search their insurance policies to find physicians that provide these therapies, which is one of the system’s standout advantages. For iOS and Android, this software offers both native mobile applications and web versions.

2. HealthTap 

Patients can download the HealthTap app for a monthly fee. It was established in 2007. This software enables users to set up medical visits through video conversations or live chat. The business provides insurance providers, medical professionals, and other employee-related items with a paid B2B medical centre. You may start using HealthTap online or through specific smartphone platforms.

3. Doctor On Demand

On-demand and planned appointments with US-licensed healthcare professionals are available through the telemedicine platform Dr. on Demand. It uses a flat fee-based business model doctor on Demand app. Every time a patient sees a doctor, they pay a specific cost. Android, iOS, and web-based mobile applications. Online health consultations are the main emphasis of Physician on Call.

4. Practo 

Practo, a 2008 startup, has 5 million Google Play installations. By giving its fans more, this popularity is increased. With the help of this app, people may plan online doctor visits, submit medications, make pill reminders, arrange for physical examinations, and order medicine. Practo covers all internet and digital platforms.

5. Doctolib

Doctlib, a French unicorn, was established in 2013. Based on the kind of membership, its software and applications allow customers to book doctor’s appointments. It offers the potential of telehealth visits, payments, physician and patient portfolios, and other utility programs. Sixty million individuals presently use Doctolib in France, Austria, and Italy, with 300 000 professionals; most of them have used the service to schedule a visit.

Cost of Building a Medical Appointment App

Considering how most individuals are predicted to use doctor appointment booking apps in the upcoming decades and years, the expense of producing one is slight. You will stay caught up if you remember doing this, just like in several other industries. The price of developing a mobile app for scheduling medical appointments may vary based on several factors:

• The Number of Features;

• Integrations Of Third-Party APIs;

• IT Stacks;

• Team Structure;

• Expire Dates, Etc.

Additionally, if you use our advice, you can reduce some of the related expenditures. You’ll get a tool that must enable your healthcare practice to generate an ROI you probably never imagined was feasible. You will always be happy investing the money and effort into developing an app for online doctor appointments.

Starting From $54,000 for a Prototype and $84,000 for a fully operational medical appointment booking process, the price of developing an on-demand online appointment scheduling app might vary. The later version would provide medical professionals with a doctor appointment web application.

Again, use pre-made scheduling elements to ensure that every dollar spent results in a better ROI. Another feature that may be added utilising third-party SDKs to reduce the programming cost is a chat function.

To maintain the cost of developing an app on the base, you may also choose a cross-platform strategic framework utilizing technologies like React Native. The functionality and features you stay with while developing a doctor appointment software will significantly impact how long it requires to build a mobile application.

Conclusion

You will require a reliable collaborator to guide you through every stage of the process if you choose to develop an online medical appointment system. The market for healthcare systems is anticipated to develop at a CAGR of 38.26% to reach USD 111.1 billion by 2025. (2019-2025). We know this market’s primary issue, dangers, and goals since we have experience developing healthcare applications of all types of complexity. So, we are ready to impart our technical knowledge to you.

A patient’s likelihood of missing an appointment with a doctor is significantly decreased with doctor scheduling software. It also improves customer satisfaction and simplifies time-consuming administrative functions.