The way of delivering healthcare services is gradually changing these days. Thanks to modern technology, patients can now avoid the necessity of spending long hours to get to a medical center and sit in a queue in order to get a 10-minute face-to-face communication with a doctor. Today a lot of people from different corners of the world can now rely on one of numerous telemedicine apps that allow them to get consultations in a fully remote format which takes significantly less time than traditional appointments.
The growing number of mHealth applications that are available on app marketplaces today can be good proof of the increasing popularity of such services and the demand for them that can be observed among different social groups. As of the third quarter of 2023, only on Apple’s App Store, there are more than 41.5K mHealth apps.
Given the tightening competition in the industry, the teams that are building custom healthcare software and developing marketing strategies for telemedicine businesses need to be really sophisticated and inventive today. If you are going to launch a telemedicine app and want it to become successful, you should find the right approach to building your business and attracting users. And that’s exactly what we’d like to talk about in this article.
Top tips for those who want to start a telemedicine business
To begin with, let us highlight that all projects are different which means that there can’t be any universal solutions that will work in 100%. You can’t just take a strategy of a successful project and copy it. You should always remember about the uniqueness of your product and do your best to demonstrate and highlight it.
However, there are some general rules that you should be aware of. They will guide you at the beginning of your business journey and will help you to understand how to move further.
Study healthcare and telemedicine regulation in your country
Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in many countries and to successfully operate your business, you need to know and strictly follow all the rules in the chosen jurisdiction. However, please do not forget that laws can greatly differ in various locations. That’s why you should always monitor the changes and peculiarities in legislation when you are planning to expand to new markets. Your telemedicine app should be 100% compliant with the existing regulations.
Define your key goals
Before even starting to plan the development process, you need to clearly understand what exact tasks your app will solve. Will it help just to provide consultations remotely? Or will you allow doctors to organize remote patient monitoring via your app? Who will be the main target audience of your product: people who do not have access to traditional medical services or those who just want to replace traditional appointments with doctors with a new option of online consultations? When you clearly understand what existing issues your app should address and what new opportunities it should provide, it will be easier for you to understand what functionality should be built for it.
Analyze the market
As we’ve already mentioned, the market of healthcare apps of different types is gradually expanding which means that there is already a row of successful (and not very successful) cases that you can take for inspiration. We recommend you attentively study what solutions are already available, what they offer, what tools they have, and what people think about them. This analysis will provide you with highly valuable insights. Based on them, you will be able to define the concept of your own telemedicine business.
Think about your business model and the core functionality of your app
While planning your solution, you need to understand how you will monetize your app, what channels of communication and tools will be available to patients and doctors, how they will interact with your application, and what external services should be integrated to ensure smooth experiences for users. All the requirements should be described in detail and further provided to developers who will be responsible for building your software product.
Choose a reliable development team
This tip will be relevant in those cases when you do not have in-house developers and are not going to hire them. In this situation, you should find a trustworthy external team that will help you with the technical part of the project realization and will build an app in accordance with your requirements. Do not forget to read the reviews and discuss all the terms of your cooperation in advance in order to avoid unpleasant surprises like hidden costs in the future.
Closing word
We strongly recommend you carefully plan everything before investing money into software development or any related services. You always should remember about possible risks and be well prepared to deal with them if you face them. Though a lot of business owners always try to save as much money as possible at the stage of project realization, it won’t be feasible to work with developers who have suspiciously low rates. If you want to protect yourself from financial losses at this stage, it will be a good idea to start with the development of an MVP (minimum viable product) which will help you check whether your idea is worth being transformed into a real product.
