Complete Guide to Build On-demand Appointment App for Patients and Doctors

Waiting in the long queues is a thing of the past for many patients globally. All thanks to the advancing technology and an on-demand appointment app. Today, patients have more comfort and convenience as they can get rid of the gloomy sight and distinct odour while awaiting for their turn anxiously. The on-demand doctors and patients app has made it possible.

The healthcare sector has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years with the help of healthcare IT. This sector is among the pioneers in the corporate world that have embraced digital or IT trends.

The digital health market has recorded tremendous growth between the years 2015 to 2020. The following Statista graph shows the projection of the CAGR for the digital health market globally.

These days, the booming on-demand economy has also surged through covering service industries including healthcare services.

Summing up, doctors of the 21st century are ready to leverage the benefits of IT advancements and provide excellent services to a large number of patients in real-time through dedicated healthcare apps.

A survey has revealed that over 80% of respondents or physicians use feature-rich medical apps regularly. The on-demand appointment app can help patients and doctors alike by bridging the gap and saving time.

If you are a healthcare service provider, the on-demand patient app or a doctor appointment booking app can improve the patient experience significantly. Let’s go through key features for the on-demand doctor appointment app.

On-demand Doctor Appointment App- Features You Must Include

Your on-demand doctor booking app must-have the following features for facilitating users or patients to book an appointment.

Profile or Registration

Patients and doctors both have to register themselves in the doctor appointment application. The app users can fill the necessary details and create their profiles. The doctor’s profile consists of their location, experience, specialty, certifications, photos, and rating given by patients. The patient’s profile comprises their first and last name, address, age, contact details, and other necessary information.

Searching

This is one of the most important features of the on-demand appointment app. It facilitates the patients to search for a suitable doctor according to their requirements. Here, various filters like specialty, price, preferable range, etc. are given to select the doctor.

For example, if the patient is suffering from stomach pain, they can search for a nearby gastroenterologist. Filters can make the searching process quick and accurate.

Schedule Appointments

Then comes the main feature as appointment booking. After selecting the doctor, the patient can send a request for scheduling an appointment. Here, the app has a built-in chat feature to enable the patients to share additional issues with the doctor. Once everything is finalized, the doctor confirms the appointment request and the app shows the exact time to meet the doctor.

Payment Options

Like other on-demand apps, it is necessary for the healthcare app to provide users multiple payment options. Many options can enable users to make payments through credit cards, debit cards, and mobile wallets while scheduling appointments with doctors. It is fair to mention that the payment option is a crucial stage, and you need to make sure that none of the app users find any problems in it. Here are some of the necessary criteria to be followed-

– The payment process should be secure and simple with only a few actions
– The processing time should be short
– The payment process must be resilient against cyberattacks

Emergency Contact

SOS or emergency is one of the most important features of the on-demand appointment application. It is necessary to tackle a medical emergency. This feature enables the user to call for an ambulance by using a few clicks during an emergency.

Also Read- Healthcare app development for startups

Video Conferencing

This is also an important feature for doctors and patients. It enables app users to interact with their doctors. When patients reside in remote areas, this feature can save their time and effort as they do not need to visit the hospital. The live video conferencing feature is also useful for physicians as they can discuss the patient’s health condition in real-time.

Document Sharing

It enables the patients to share their lab reports, medical history, prescriptions, and other records with physicians. This feature plays a vital role in diagnosis and helps physicians make informed decisions on time.

Notifications

Personalized notifications can remind patients about their appointments. These are push notifications and patients get them even if they are not using the app. The admin can also send notifications regarding medication and medicine refilling.

Help Center

It can act as a 24/7 online help center. As you own the healthcare services organization, you need to provide help to the app users on a 24/7 basis. An app-based help or support center can be a one-stop destination for all health-related requirements. This feature can be proven useful for aged people or patients suffering from acute diseases that require immediate medical attention.

The mobile app development company can make an on-demand app for the doctors and patients to meet various requirements of the healthcare service organizations. For example, a dedicated mobile application can be built for patients that enable them to fill their details and medical history.

This information can act as a reference for physicians. Also, patients can get different articles related to their medical history in the personalized browsing screen. This mobile application is named the patient app.

After going through the features, let’s have some useful tips to make your on-demand doctor appointment app successful.

Top Tips to Make Your On-demand Appointment App Successful

A feature-rich and flawlessly-performing on-demand appointment application can draw the attention of many people in a short time. But, to make your app successful and keep it helpful for many users for a long time, you need to follow some tips. Here we mention a few of them.

On-demand Doctor and Patient App Development- Major Steps to Consider

Build a robust network

Your healthcare services organization should establish a robust network of physicians for helping patients to diagnose and treat various diseases. Your network should consist of cardiologists, urologists, gastroenterologists, and other specialists.

Offer benefits to doctors

To make your app successful, you need to strengthen your network of doctors. You can do so by offering multiple benefits to doctors like quick payment, higher visibility, etc. You can also provide a loyalty bonus in terms of points, gifts, or money to doctors.

Ensure authentication- Doctor’s authentication is a must to instill trust among your app users. When you list or approve any doctor’s registration, make sure that they have a credible work history. The bad reputation of any member doctor can impact your app and services badly.

Monetization strategy

You can generate good revenue from a healthcare app. However, as a niche and life-saving services provider, you need to remain cautious while making a monetization strategy from your app.

You need to consider various aspects while putting the patient at the core while selecting the revenue model. With this, you need to maintain a subtle balance between the membership plan for doctors and the revenue model.

Select right platform

You need to keep the target audience in mind while selecting the technology task. It is better to opt for Android app developmentif you want to provide services across any Asian or African country. The iOS app development is preferable for Europe and North America.

It is advisable to consult a reputed mobile app development company to get every assistance from conceptualization to development and testing to promoting your on-demand doctor appointment app. You may wonder about the cost now. Let’s discuss the cost of a customized appointment app.

Also Read- Healthcare App Development- Scope, Importance, and Cost Revealed

How Much Does It Cost to Develop On-demand Doctor Appointment App

Like other on-demand apps, the doctor appointment app depends on major factors like app complexity, development duration, platform, technology stack and hourly rate of developers.

Now, all these factors are interrelated. For example, app complexity has a direct relation to the development duration. The hourly rate has an impact proportionate to the app duration. In other words, it is better to hire on-demand app developers from countries like India to complete your app project at a reasonable cost.

Platform selection is also a cost-determining factor. The Android app takes more time to develop as the android app development involves rigorous testing. On the other hand, cross-platform or hybrid app development helps you get the app in a short time.

As per our estimation, the frontend of the app for each platform takes around 350-450 hours. We need to give 60-70 hours in building the UI and the backend development will take around 300 hours. Altogether, an on-demand doctor appointment app gets ready in around 600-700 hours. If we consider the hourly rate at $30, then your app development cost will be approximately $20000.

Concluding Remarks

The on-demand appointment app is an “Uber” for the healthcare sector! Both patients and physicians can leverage its benefits. Many healthcare service providers have already started considering an on-demand appointment app development for facilitating their patients. We have covered all major aspects of the on-demand doctor appointment in this article. It is advisable to provide all must-have features in the application. We have also included the cost-determining factors at the end to complete our guide.

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