In the last few years, digitalization has revolutionized almost every industry. The Healthcare industry is the one for which the table has entirely turned. The advent of digital transformation has made the process of booking an appointment with doctors quite seamless. The Healthcare industry has witnessed a sudden rise in the demand for on-demand doctor appointment booking applications.
The doctor appointment booking application development services have made healthcare easier to access than ever before.
Doctor appointment booking facilitates doctors and patients to handle functionalities such as bookings, cancellations, re-booking, and follow-ups and gives online reminders that mitigate daunting manual tasks that involve scheduling an appointment with doctors.
Why Building a Doctor Appointment App for Your Healthcare Business is The Need of the Hour?
The answer to this question lies in understanding the market dynamism of doctor appointment booking applications. Let’s first understand the global online booking market, which is expected to grow to $360 million by 2024, $600 million by 2026, and USD 728.6 million by 2027.
The rise in the market value of appointment booking apps is due to the change in user preferences. Around 43% of patients prefer online appointment booking. 60% of healthcare professionals say that online doctor appointment booking reduces the chances of appointment cancellation.
The Essential Features to Include in Your Doctor Appointment Application
The market value of the custom doctor appointment booking app is showing an increasing trend. Henceforth, it is the right time for healthcare organizations to invest in doctor appointment booking app development services.
Before you hire a healthcare app development company, let’s first understand the prominent features of the doctor appointment booking application.
- Geo-location based search
- Emergency Services
- User profile
- Appointment booking
- Doctor & clinic search
- Dedicated Doctors’ Profile
- Payment Gateway
User Profile
A doctor appointment booking app must have a provision of a dedicated user profile where all the information of the stakeholders can be stored and seen by the doctors and patients.
You can ask your doctor’s appointment booking app development company to keep the user profile feature in the app. One important thing, keep the profile as minimalistic as possible and keep only essential columns like name, appointment timings, age, sex, medical history, etc.
Doctor Clinic and Search
It is also one of the must-have features of a doctor appointment application that you can consider. This feature enables patients to search for doctors and clinics based on different parameters such as the specialization of a doctor, the name of the doctor, their waiting time, visiting charges, and the experience of a doctor, to name a few. Make sure you integrate the wide search and filter option in the advanced search feature in the app.
Dedicated Doctor’s Profile
Health organizations should also ask their mobile app development company to build a doctor’s profile feature. Patients can check the availability of the doctors and their details such as experience, expertise, etc.
Doctors can upload their professional profiles describing all essential details, which could help patients book their appointment.
Some essential elements of a doctor’s profile include location, review, competence, photos, experience, etc.
Appointment Booking
It is one of the most basic features that you could ask your mobile app developers to integrate into your doctor appointment booking application. This feature streamlines the process of finding the right doctor and confirming the time slab with them.
This basic but vital feature decides the success of your appointment booking application. Features such as booking an appointment for future dates and doctors’ discretion in accepting/rejecting appointments can be included in the application.
Payment Gateway
It is an integral part of a doctor appointment booking application development that facilitates patients to make an online payment for doctor’s services and other medical expenses.
Including a digital monetization model at the time of doctor appointment booking app development services will streamline many things. It makes payment fast, easy, and highly encrypted with utmost security.
Geo-location Based Search
Adding the geo-location-based search option in an app is a part of the Minimal Viable Product aka MVP features. It enables patients to conduct their search for doctors and clinics in their nearby areas.
Ask your mobile app developers to include such functionality wherein your users can conduct a location-based search in your doctor appointment booking mobile app via Google and Apple Map integration.
This feature will improve the app’s usability and grow the session time of your medical app for a doctor’s appointment.
Emergency Services
You can take the usability of your application to the next level by integrating an emergency option within. The emergency feature in an app works as on-the-spot health support wherein the patients can find a cure for multiple emergency healthcare services such as broken bones, burns, and many other emergency care.
You can also share the details of the availability of the emergency room through this feature, and it will improve waiting time and help patients get the required emergency services without any jitters.
Some more features which you can include in your doctor appointment booking app are as follow –
- Telemedicine
- Patient Check-in from the app
- At home medical service
- Reminder for appointments
- Doctor review
Use of Advanced Technologies to Make Your Doctors Appoint App Future Ready
At the present time, there are three emerging technologies that are trending and benefiting different industry verticals. Ask your mobile app development company to use these three technologies as per requirements and develop a doctor appointment booking app –
Machine Learning and AI
- Artificial Intelligence makes search more relevant.
- It understands general healthcare terms and gives specific results.
- It excellently matches patients and doctors.
Cloud Computing
- It helps in managing petabytes of data. It streamlines data storage.
- Demarcate large data sizes into feasible categories.
- Transforms the data into insightful reports that facilitate the way for better services.
Blockchain
- Blockchain can excellently bring all the data into one decentralized system.
- It enhances data security. Only those who have the right to access can use the information. It eliminates data breaches.
- Healthcare app for patients enables them to check their insurance claim details before booking a doctor’s appointment.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Doctor Appointment Application?
There are different features and functionalities based on which the cost of app development depends.
Doctor mobile app development cost also varies on the basis of the type of development services that users wish to hire.
Some of the most important factors that affect the cost to develop a doctor appointment app development cost are as follows –
- User interface and UX design
- Web development tools, frameworks, etc.
- The selection of platform, iOS and Android
- Experience of mobile app developers
- Expertise of mobile app developers
On average, the hourly rate of mobile app developers ranges from $20 to $200. It varies as per location and brand value.
In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, development cost ranges between 40k USD to 70k USD.
If you hire a mobile app development company from countries such as India, the cost of development will be highly budget-friendly. The development cost will range from 25000 US dollars and 40,000 US dollars.
Conclusion
The way digital healthcare is flourishing exponentially, we can say the future of healthcare mobile app development is quite bright. If you think your healthcare organization needs doctor appointment booking application development services, it’s the right time to go for the same.
Hire a mobile app development company and discuss your requirements in detail. With the guidance of professional developers, you will garner excellent and result-driven outcomes.
