Steps for Telehealth App Development from Idea to Launch

In the past, one would have never entrusted their health to a digital application. That, however, has changed, especially when the 2020 COVID pandemic hit. 

Telehealth is now a rapidly growing sector of digital life, and especially a boon for people living in remote areas who have to travel over long distances even for milder ailments. The telehealth app market was also valued at a staggering $101 billion in 2023, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 24% next year. 

If you want to get started in the telehealth app development process, now is the perfect time. Let’s talk about the various aspects involved in this process. 

Research Market and Competitors

Before you get started with the telehealth app development process, a thorough understanding of the market is essential for a successful app. Just like any other app development cycle, it involves a comprehensive analysis of the target audience, user needs, competitive landscape, and market gaps. 

Identifying the Target Audience

Pinpointing the specific demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic groups that will benefit most from the app is crucial. Key considerations include:

• Demographics: Age, gender, income, education level, occupation, and family size.
  
• Geography: Urban, suburban, or rural areas, as well as regional variations in healthcare access and preferences.
  
• Socioeconomic factors: Insurance coverage, healthcare costs, and technological literacy.
  
• Specific health conditions: Identifying target populations with particular healthcare needs, such as chronic diseases or mental health issues.

It’s also essential to have an understanding of the specific pain points and expectations of the target audience, for designing a user-centric app. This involves:

• Conducting user interviews: Gathering qualitative data on user needs, preferences, and behaviors. This is especially important during a telehealth app development process.
  
• Creating user personas: Developing fictional representations of ideal customers to guide design decisions. This gives you a baseline to work with and helps tailor your app to your user base.
  
• Analyzing user feedback: Incorporating insights from existing telehealth users and healthcare providers.
  
• Identifying user journeys: Mapping out the steps users take to achieve their goals within the app.

Finally, a thorough analysis of existing telehealth apps helps uncover strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in the market. 

By identifying key competitors and assessing their features, user experience, pricing, and marketing strategies, you can pinpoint areas where your app can differentiate itself. Exploring market gaps by analyzing user feedback and collaborating with healthcare providers can lead to innovative features that address unmet needs.

Specify Business and Compliance Needs

To successfully develop your telehealth app, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of its purpose, target users, and the regulatory landscape. 

Start by defining the core functionalities, such as appointment scheduling, video consultations, and electronic health record integration. Identify the specific needs of different user roles, including patients, providers, and administrators, to ensure the app meets their unique requirements.

Establish clear business goals—like improving patient outcomes, increasing revenue, or enhancing provider efficiency—to give your development team a focused direction. 

Additionally, strict adherence to healthcare regulations is paramount to protect patient privacy and security. A few of the more important compliances in the United States include: 

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) 
• Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) 
• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 
• FCC and FTC compliance
• Regulatory approval from the FDA 

When designing your telehealth app, it is important that your software development cycle is HIPAA compliant. We will cover this in a later section of the article. 

Detail Software Requirements

A comprehensive understanding of the app’s functionalities is essential for successful telehealth app development. Typically, you would work on the following steps:

• Prioritizing features: This is crucial to effectively allocate resources and ensure timely delivery. By determining which features are essential for the app’s core functionality and which can be added later, development teams can focus on delivering high-value features first.
  
• Defining user flows: It involves mapping out the steps users take to accomplish specific tasks within the app. This helps visualize the user experience and identify potential pain points. For example, a user flow for scheduling an appointment would outline the steps from searching for available providers to confirming the appointment.
  
• Creating user stories: These perspectives are important to understand the app’s functionality from the user’s point of view. User stories typically follow the format of “As a [user role], I want [feature] so that [benefit].” For example, “As a patient, I want to be able to schedule an appointment online so that I can easily access healthcare services.”
  
• Specifying technical requirements: Here, you outline the hardware, software, and network infrastructure needed to support the app. This includes identifying the operating platforms, programming languages, databases, cloud platforms, and network connectivity requirements. By clearly defining these technical specifications, development teams can select appropriate tools and technologies for the project.

Design Compliance and Integration

When developing your telehealth app, protecting patient data and ensuring it connects seamlessly with existing healthcare systems are essential. Start by implementing strong security protocols to safeguard sensitive information. This includes strict access controls, high-level encryption, and regular security audits to identify and fix any vulnerabilities.

Integrating your telehealth platform with Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems allows healthcare providers to access patient data efficiently, make informed decisions, and deliver timely care. 

Additionally, incorporating secure payment gateways is crucial for handling financial transactions. This ensures that patient payment information is kept confidential, fostering trust between patients, providers, and your telehealth platform.

Once you have completed the initial phase of defining your business and compliance needs, you can start planning the detailed aspects of your telehealth project.

Project Planning

Effective project planning makes a significant difference in the telehealth app development process. This phase usually involves defining the project’s scope, selecting the appropriate development methodology, allocating resources, and identifying potential risks. Let’s take a look at some of these steps involved, in detail. 

Identify Project Scope

Defining the project scope involves clearly outlining your project’s objectives, deliverables, and boundaries. This crucial step ensures that your development team has a shared understanding of the project’s goals and prevents scope creep. Key aspects of scope definition include:

• Project objectives: Clearly articulating the desired outcomes of the project, such as improving patient access to care, enhancing provider efficiency, or generating revenue.
  
• Project deliverables: Identifying the specific products or services that will be produced, such as the telehealth app itself, associated documentation, and training materials.
  
• Project boundaries: Establishing clear limitations on the project, including the scope of features, target audience, and integration points with existing systems.
  
• Stakeholder identification: Identifying all individuals or groups who have an interest in or influence over the project, such as patients, providers, administrators, and investors.

Plan The Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

Selecting the appropriate SDLC model is essential for organizing and managing the development process. Common SDLC models include Waterfall, Agile, Iterative, and DevOps. 

The chosen model should align with the project’s specific requirements, team structure, and risk tolerance. Also, as a telehealth app, your application must be HIPAA-compliant, as well as the software you use to develop this app. Codewave, for instance, uses HIPAA-compliant resources to help develop your app. 

Key considerations for SDLC selection include:

• Project complexity: Evaluating the size and complexity of the project to determine the most suitable SDLC model.
  
• Team structure and expertise: Considering the team’s experience and skills to select a model that maximizes their strengths.
  
• Client involvement: Determining the level of client involvement required throughout the development process.
  
• Risk tolerance: Assessing the project’s risk profile to choose a model that can effectively manage uncertainties.

Determine Budget and Schedule

Telehealth projects might seem financially daunting at first, which is why developing a realistic budget and schedule before the project even begins is crucial. Key components of budget and schedule development include:

• Cost estimation: Identifying and quantifying all project costs, including labor, materials, software, hardware, and overhead expenses.
  
• Resource allocation: Determining the required human resources, including developers, designers, testers, and project managers, and assigning tasks.
  
• Project timeline creation: Developing a detailed project schedule with milestones and deadlines for each phase of development.
  
• Budget tracking: Establishing a system for monitoring project expenditures and ensuring adherence to the budget.

Assess and Mitigate Risks

Finally, identifying and addressing potential risks before they arise also makes a difference to your project. Key risk management activities include:

• Risk identification: Identifying potential risks that could impact the project’s success, such as technical challenges, regulatory changes, or resource constraints.
  
• Risk assessment: Evaluating the likelihood and impact of each identified risk.
  
• Risk mitigation: Developing strategies to reduce the probability or impact of identified risks.
  
• Risk monitoring and control: Continuously monitoring for new risks and adjusting mitigation plans as needed.

By carefully considering these project planning elements, you have a much better grasp on developing a successful telehealth app within budget and on schedule.

UX and UI Design

People’s behaviors, preferences and usage patterns often dictate how you want your app to look. A well-designed user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are critical to the success of all apps, and especially telehealth apps: Such critical services must be designed with utmost care. 

Good UI and UX also always leads to much better turnaround in customers. For example, Hubspot noticed a 57% improvement in customer conversion after paying attention to UI/UX for one of their landing pages.  

Let’s look at the various factors in UI/UX to pay attention to. 

Design User Scenarios and Functionality

Creating detailed user scenarios is an essential step to understand how users will interact with the app. These scenarios outline the steps users will take to achieve specific goals, such as scheduling an appointment, consulting with a doctor, or managing health records. 

By mapping out these user journeys, designers can identify potential pain points and opportunities for improvement. This also includes defining how users will navigate between screens, input data, and interact with the system. Careful consideration of user needs and the app’s overall goals is crucial at this stage.

Create Prototypes

UI prototyping involves creating visual representations of the app’s interface to test and refine the design. These prototypes can be low-fidelity (sketches or wireframes) or high-fidelity (interactive mockups). By testing prototypes with potential users, designers can gather feedback and make necessary adjustments. 

Once the UI design is finalized, the creation of high-fidelity designs begins. This involves developing the visual elements of the app, including color schemes, typography, imagery, and layout. The goal is to create a visually appealing and intuitive interface that aligns with the app’s branding and target audience.

Incorporate Healthcare Elements

A successful telehealth app must prioritize the needs of both patients and doctors, which involves having a deep understanding of their respective workflows or expectations.

For patients, the focus should be on creating a user-friendly experience that is easy to navigate and understand. This includes concise information, intuitive controls, and accessible features for users with disabilities. 

Additionally, the app should provide tools for patients to manage aspects like appointment scheduling, medication reminders, and health education resources.

When it comes to doctors, the app should be designed to streamline workflows, more than anything. This includes features such as patient management tools, electronic health record integration, and secure messaging. The interface should be intuitive and allow doctors to quickly access the information they need. 

App Development and Integration

Now that we’ve gone through some of the most crucial pre-development phases, it’s time to understand the development phase itself. The development and integration phase of a telehealth app is where the design becomes a functional product. 

This involves constructing the app’s backend infrastructure, connecting it to existing systems, building user interfaces, and establishing communication channels. Let’s take a look at the steps involved in this phase of the telehealth app development process. 

Develop Back-End Architecture

The backend is the foundation of any app, handling data storage, processing, and logic. Key components of backend development include:

• Database design: Creating a robust database schema to store patient information, appointment data, medical records, and other relevant data.
  
• Server-side logic: Developing the core functionalities of the app, such as appointment scheduling, video conferencing, and messaging.
  
• API development: Creating APIs to enable communication between different components of the app.
  
• Cloud infrastructure: Selecting and configuring a cloud platform (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) to host the backend services and ensure scalability.
  
• Security implementation: Implementing robust security measures to protect sensitive patient data, such as encryption, access controls, and data backups.

Integrate with Existing Hospital Systems

Integrating the telehealth app with existing hospital systems is crucial for data exchange and patient care. Key integration points include:

• Electronic health records (EHR): Connecting the app to EHR systems to access patient information, such as medical history, medications, and allergies.
  
• Appointment scheduling systems: Integrating with existing appointment scheduling software to synchronize schedules and avoid conflicts.
  
• Billing systems: Connecting the app to billing systems for processing payments and generating invoices.
  
• Communication platforms: Integrating with existing communication tools, such as email and SMS, for appointment reminders and notifications.
  
• Data exchange standards: Adhering to healthcare interoperability standards (HL7, FHIR) to ensure a smooth data exchange.

APIs for Communication

APIs serve as the communication backbone of the telehealth app, enabling data exchange between different components. Key API functionalities include:

• User authentication and authorization: Verifying user credentials and granting appropriate access levels.
  
• Appointment scheduling: Managing appointment creation, modification, and cancellation.
  
• Video conferencing: Enabling real-time video and audio communication between patients and providers.
  
• Messaging: Facilitating secure text-based communication between users.
  
• Data exchange: Transferring patient information between the telehealth app and EHR systems.
  
• Payment processing: Integrating with payment gateways to process transactions.

By carefully planning and executing these development and integration tasks, telehealth app developers can create a robust and user-friendly platform that delivers high-quality care.

Quality Assurance and Testing

We are almost at the finish line of this lengthy telehealth app development process. In order to launch your app, you will need to conduct rigorous testing, an essential to ensure the reliability, performance, and security of a telehealth app. 

This phase involves a systematic approach to identifying and rectifying defects, as well as verifying compliance.

Conduct Unit and Peer Code Reviews

Unit testing involves testing individual components of the codebase to ensure they function as expected. This helps identify and rectify errors early in the development process. 

Peer code reviews, on the other hand, involve having other developers examine the code for potential issues, such as coding standards violations, security vulnerabilities, and performance bottlenecks. These collaborative reviews contribute to code quality and knowledge sharing within the development team.

Perform Stress and Regression Testing

Stress testing evaluates the app’s performance under extreme conditions, such as high user loads or network congestion. This helps identify bottlenecks and performance issues that may impact the user experience. 

Regression testing involves re-executing previously passed tests to ensure that new code changes have not introduced unintended side effects. By conducting these tests, developers can verify the app’s stability and reliability under various conditions.

Revise and Mitigate Risks

Risk assessment and mitigation are ongoing processes throughout the development lifecycle. As testing uncovers potential issues, it is crucial to prioritize and address them effectively. This involves analyzing the impact of identified risks, developing mitigation strategies, and implementing changes to the code or design. 

By proactively managing risks, development teams can reduce the likelihood of project delays and ensure the app’s quality.

Ensure Security and Compliance Testing

Thorough security testing is essential to protect patient data and comply with healthcare regulations. This includes vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and security audits to identify and address potential security weaknesses. 

Compliance testing verifies that the app adheres to relevant regulations, such as HIPAA, GDPR (If you also plan to target the UK), and state-specific laws. 

By conducting comprehensive security and compliance testing, development teams can build trust with users and avoid legal and reputational risks. Codewave, for instance, offers robust quality assurance testing along with our inhouse custom app development and integration with existing services.  

Certification and Pilot Roll-Out

Before a full-scale launch, a telehealth app must undergo rigorous certification processes and a controlled pilot phase to ensure its quality, safety, and effectiveness.

Compliance with healthcare regulations is paramount for telehealth apps. Obtaining the necessary certifications is crucial to protect patient data and ensure the app meets industry standards.

HIPAA Compliance

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates stringent security and privacy standards for protecting patient health information (PHI). Telehealth apps, as platforms handling sensitive medical data, must adhere to these regulations to safeguard patient trust and avoid severe penalties.

HIPAA compliance consists of three primary areas: the Security Rule, the Privacy Rule, and the Breach Notification Rule.

• The Security Rule outlines administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). This includes measures such as:
  
  • Access controls: Restricting access to PHI based on roles and responsibilities.
    
  • Audit trails: Tracking user activity and system access.
    
  • Encryption: Protecting PHI during transmission and storage.
    
  • Network security: Implementing firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security measures.
    
  • Device and media controls: Protecting physical access to devices containing PHI.
    
  • Business associate agreements: Ensuring that third-party service providers comply with HIPAA.
    
• The Privacy Rule establishes national standards for protecting individuals’ medical records and other personal health information. Key provisions include:
  
  • Patient rights: Granting patients rights to access, amend, and request restrictions on their PHI.
    
  • Minimum necessary: Limiting access to PHI to only those individuals who need it for their job functions.
    
• The Breach Notification Rule specifies requirements for reporting data breaches to affected individuals and the HHS. Telehealth apps must have incident response plans in place to handle data breaches effectively and comply with notification timelines. 

21 CFR Part 11 Compliance

For apps that involve electronic records or signatures, compliance with the United States Code of Federal Regulations’ 21 CFR Part 11 is essential. This regulation outlines the electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES) requirements for the pharmaceutical industry, but its principles are often adopted by other healthcare sectors. 

Achieving 21 CFR Part 11 compliance involves implementing controls for record creation, modification, and deletion, as well as ensuring the authenticity, integrity, and reliability of electronic signatures.

Pilot Testing and Feedback Gathering

A pilot program allows for testing the telehealth app in a controlled environment before a full-scale launch. This phase is crucial for identifying potential issues, gathering user feedback, and making necessary adjustments.

• User Selection: Carefully selecting a representative group of patients and healthcare providers to participate in the pilot is essential. This group should reflect the target user population to ensure that the app meets the needs of a diverse user base.
  
• Data Collection: Implementing robust data collection methods to gather feedback and performance metrics during the pilot phase is crucial. This includes collecting user feedback through surveys, interviews, and usability testing, as well as tracking app usage, performance, and technical issues.
  
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Defining KPIs to measure the success of the pilot program is essential. This includes metrics such as patient satisfaction, provider adoption, appointment completion rates, and technical performance.

Revise Based on Pilot Feedback

Analyzing the data collected during the pilot phase and incorporating user feedback is essential for improving the telehealth app.

• Iterative Design: Using the insights gained from the pilot to make necessary adjustments to the app’s features, user interface, and functionality. This iterative process ensures that the app meets the needs of users and addresses any identified issues.
  
• Performance Optimization: Addressing any performance issues or bottlenecks identified during the pilot phase to improve the app’s speed, responsiveness, and reliability.
  
• Security Enhancements: Implementing additional security measures based on any vulnerabilities or threats identified during the pilot.
  
• User Experience Improvements: Making changes to the app’s user interface and user experience based on user feedback to enhance usability and satisfaction.

By carefully planning and executing the certification and pilot phases, telehealth app developers can increase the likelihood of a successful launch and ongoing success.

Launch and Maintenance

If all has gone well, you are now ready to launch your telehealth app to the stakeholders. Here too, there are several factors that come into play to ensure that you have a successful launch. 

The official app launch marks the beginning of the app’s journey to reach its target audience. A successful launch requires meticulous planning and execution.

• Marketing and Promotion: Developing a comprehensive marketing strategy to create awareness and generate interest in the app. This involves utilizing various channels such as social media, content marketing, public relations, and app store optimization (ASO).
  
• Public Relations: Building relationships with media outlets and influencers to generate positive press coverage and create buzz around the app. Asking healthcare providers to use the app on a trial basis can help you get an endorsement and also an honest assessment of the app.
  
• App Store Optimization: Optimizing app store listings with relevant keywords, compelling descriptions, and high-quality visuals to improve discoverability.
  
• Launch Events: Organizing launch events or webinars to engage with the target audience and generate excitement.

Continuous Support and Bug Fixes

Providing excellent customer support is also essential for building trust and loyalty among users.

• Customer Support Channels: Establishing multiple channels for users to seek assistance, such as email, phone, live chat, and in-app support.
  
• Issue Tracking: Implementing a robust system for tracking and resolving user issues and bug reports efficiently.
  
• Knowledge Base: Creating a comprehensive knowledge base to provide users with self-service support options.
  
• Regular Updates: Releasing timely updates to address bugs, improve performance, and introduce new features.

By effectively managing the launch and maintenance phases, telehealth app providers can build a strong user base, build long-term relationships, and ensure the app’s continued success. 

A Robust Approach To Telehealth

Developing a successful telehealth app requires a comprehensive and meticulous approach that includes every stage of the development lifecycle. From conceptualization to launch and maintenance, careful planning, design, development, and testing are essential. By prioritizing user experience, security, and ongoing support, you can create an innovative solution that improves healthcare accessibility and quality while mitigating risks. If you’d like to partner with a custom software developer to kickstart your telehealth app development process, talk to us at Codewave, experts in custom software development in multiple industries. Click here to start developing!