Mobile health app technology has been growing exponentially over the past decade in both emerging and developed countries. Gradually mobile devices are getting more advanced beyond simple phones and the usage of smartphones is increasing rapidly. In recent times, one can use it as full-blown computers that provide a wide range of features and services. Billions of people rely on their smartphones more than ever for health advice, doctor consultation, prescriptions, lab test report, and to track their overall health. So, the mobile health (mHealth) app becomes a vital part of the modern healthcare system.

It’s one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in the world. The recent statistics clearly show mobile health industry (mHealth) has a growing market share and rosy prospects. Here are some highlights from around the globe:

mobile Healthcare app Industry Statistics in 2022 - Infographics Created By Itobuz Technologies
Healthcare Industry Statistics in 2022

1. Healthcare sector’s revenue is expected to grow 20% in 2021-22.

2. Global healthcare spending can increase three-fold to $10 trillion by 2022.

3. Healthcare IT’s profits are forecast to increase from 14 billion in 2019 to 28 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.

4. 60% of mobile users downloaded a mobile Health app to their device.

5. Online fitness app market could reach $14.46 billion by 2027.

6. Statista shows that the global mHealth market is expected to be $100 billion by 2022, which is nearly half of the predicted total digital healthcare share of $206 billion.

Isn’t the above data really lucrative for developing a mobile health app? Let’s dive into the blog to know more about mHealth.

What is mHealth?

mHealth is an abbreviation for mobile health, refers to medical services and public health supported by mobile devices. It broadly encompasses the use of all applications of telecommunications and multimedia technologies for the delivery of health care services, health information, and health research.

mHealth has become a very useful tool for the provision of better healthcare. These apps help the patients to identify symptoms and notify if any medical supervision is required. It plays a decisive role in taking care of chronic diseases and health conditions in remote areas where doctors and nurses may not provide treatment directly. mHealth apps for medical professionals allow them to better track patient conditions, medication regimen adherence, and follow-up schedules. Also, they can treat the people who are seeking health information and even diagnoses for minor conditions. This, in turn, can enable healthcare workers to serve more patients more effectively.

It also provides authentic health-related information across socioeconomic and geographic boundaries. mHealth mobile app promotes the position of healthcare workers by offering better means of communicating fast, secure and accurate directions and knowledge.

How Coronavirus pandemic has increased the importance of mobile Health apps?

Coronavirus, (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease and it has spread to over 200 countries across the globe. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the world is reliant on public health and social measures to reduce the rate of community transmission of COVID-19. In this alarming situation, mHealth applications are an appropriate method to encounter the pandemic and deal with this crisis. These include the ability to:

List of features provided by mobile Health apps to counter Coronavirus - Infographics created by Itobuz Technologies
List of features provided by mobile Health app to counter Coronavirus

1. Contact tracing and mapping of COVID-19 cases.

2. Self-testing.

3. Symptom Monitoring.

4. Quarantine monitoring.

5. Online doctor consultation and get emergency aid.

6. Enhance physician efficiency.

7. Medication regimen adherence.

8. Access lab test results.

9. Preventing the spread of infection.

10. Increasing awareness of COVID-19.

11. Managing exposure to COVID-19.

12. Real-time healthcare information dissemination.

13. Population Health Management.

Thus, it offers to improve social distancing without sacrificing the continuity of care. Not surprisingly, mHealth mobile apps have become an inevitable part of interactions and communications during this pandemic situation.

Top HealthCare Startups & the best mobile Health apps all around the globe

Mobile technology has evolved into a new field of eHealth, known as mHealth. And, the benefits of mHealth applications continue to expand beyond the limit. This is the reason why mobile Health app technology is an emerging trend. Today, there are more than 50,000 health and wellness apps in the market, and the global mHealth market is forecasted to reach $100 billion by the end of 2021.

mobile HealthCare Startups & the best mHealth apps in the market - Compiled by Itobuz Technologies
HealthCare Startups & the best mHealth apps

Coronavirus raises unimaginable threats for everyone worldwide. And, now the mHealth mobile apps play a significant role to save mankind as well as the whole medical business industry from taking a big dip. The use of mHealth apps is being emphasized due to its convenience, ease of reach, and connectivity through the internet connection. And, we have already seen many favorable impacts of robust medical health apps. It offers the patients more power to keep an eye on their health regularly. It also helps to ease the burden on medical professionals and hospitals amid lockdowns by offering their patients the capturing, analyzing, processing, and transmitting of health-related information. So, mobile health apps have to turn out to be the best weapon against COVID19. Therefore, here is a list of some of the best health care start-ups and mobile health apps across the globe. 

UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer):
UpToDate is one of the world’s leading medical apps for doctors and medical students. It provides easy access to its functions from most devices. This app enables doctors to explore every single field of healthcare. They can search for various topics in many languages, set bookmarks, fast retrieve recently viewed data. Also, they can get the latest medical news and recommendations from the world’s best experts. It also helps doctors to make clinical decisions at the point of diagnosis.

Medscape (WebMD):
Medscape is a significant medical reference app that allows physicians to search for or access healthcare-related news right from their comfort. It provides them with the most accurate and real-time information on almost every clinical scenario. Medscape also offers database access to many medical conditions, educational videos and images both on- and offline. Its database comprises a range of detailed information on 8,500+ prescription and OTC drugs, herbals, and supplements alongside a checker of drug interaction, medical calculators, and a pill identifier.

Doximity:
Doximity is a social networking app for medical professionals. The platform provides healthcare professionals with secure communication that is in compliance with HIPAA guidelines. It also allows them to collaborate with colleagues on difficult cases, manage their careers, find relevant medical literature, and share their opinions on various medical topics. Other tools allow to conduct virtual patient visits, quicker and easier referrals and all the processes will be done without disclosing personal phone numbers or emails.

Mobile MIM:
Mobile MIM is one of the first medical apps designed to share medical images. It helps the imaging professionals by providing access to images, such as X-rays, MRI, CT, Ultrasound and cardiac imaging, etc. Using this app, clinicians can measure distance, intensity values, and display measurement lines, annotations, and regions of interest. It also allows the healthcare experts to use cloud technology to immediately view images, spot different areas of it for further diagnoses, consult with peers on challenging cases, and so on.

DynaMed Plus:
DynaMed is a robust medical app for doctors that provides an evidence-based solution. Physicians who are “on the go” can get instant yet up-to-date insights on various cases. Medical experts review these insights and update them multiple times daily. A user-friendly interface, simple navigation, EHR integration, and on-the-go access also makes the app popular among healthcare experts.

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    MDCalc:
    MDCalc is a widely-used medical calculator app since 2005 which can be used both as a desktop and a mobile app version. This most relevant clinical calculator offers healthcare professionals more than 350 tools that support evidence-based patient care. The app encompasses 50 areas of specialty, more than 200 diseases, and medical conditions as well as recommended treatment instructions.

    Nutrimedy:
    Nutrimedy is a B2B healthcare start-up focused on the next generation of evidence-based clinical nutrition care using mobile and web platforms. This app provides real-time at-point recommendations for more than 50 health conditions. It also offers longitudinal support and guidance to deliver personalized care with nutrition experts, one-on-one interventions, customizable trackers and AI-enabled photo food logging, etc.

    PEPID:
    PEPID is a powerful clinical software solution designed for clinical decision support and patient care optimization. The app allows physicians to input the patient’s symptoms, lab results, and other findings into the app to come up with a certain diagnosis. This patient care app helps to improve overall care and medication safety. PEPID offers one of the most robust medical information resources from 12 leading healthcare associations, including the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, American College of Emergency Physicians which makes it indispensable among healthcare providers.

    Headspace:
    Headspace is one of the world’s best medical apps that provide guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. It is one of the most frequently downloaded mindfulness apps in the world, with a user base of over 20 million. This app has an appealing user interface and is easy to navigate. Also, the content on their website is accessible and free for everyone. Headspace offers numerous guided meditations that cover things like cravings, awareness, anxiety, stress, finding focus, dealing with regret, trouble sleeping, and much more. And, it actually does help the users in many aspects.

    Medisafe:

    Medisafe, the leading personalized medication management app is intended for patients to keep track of their medicines. It is most user-friendly for patients who are on prescription medications for chronic diseases. This patient care app is described as a “virtual pillbox” as it allows them to create a medication list, remind them to take their medications, and record medication events. But, more than just a pill organizer, this app can record medical tests, measurements, and reports, add medical appointments and encourage adherence.

    What features are required in mHealth and fitness apps? (Cost + Time + Infographics)

    Health and fitness apps are playing a significant role to fulfil the healthcare needs of countless people across the world. Here are some important features that make the apps more useful and popular among the users:

    Features of mobile Health apps - Dev. Cost + Dev. Time + mHealth Infographics created by Itobuz Technologies
    Cost and Time to develop a mHealth AppInfographics

    Features of mHealth Apps:

    Video Conferencing Features with Telemedicine:
    This is an integrated feature in mHealth mobile apps that is used in medical training, education and credentialing, and patient care. It allows medical experts to work together in real-time with patients over video calls. It also helps to communicate with the patients more effectively and reliably from any location, on any device. This in turn brings higher productivity and reduces the overall cost of healthcare for patients and providers.  This feature can be developed in 78-80 hours and the cost is around $2200.

    The User and Doctor Profile Feature:
    This is a must-have feature of any mHealth app. It should allow the doctors to display their specializations, experience, clinic location, or appointment cost in the account profile. So that, patients can choose their required physician according to their needs. For patients, it should allow them to personalize the account’s profile and have easy access. It also helps them to log in to the app from their different social media accounts. The cost of the feature is around $600 and time requires around 15-16 hours. 

    Search Feature:
    It helps the users to search for anything they want to look at. The search box has filters, suggestions, and auto-completion much as you can experience with Google or a similar search engine. It may cost around $600 and the development time is 15-16 hours.

    Listing Feature:
    This feature works well to show a list of search results. Also, helps to verify the patients to set up appointments for doctors, lab tests, and so on. This feature might take 7-8 hours, with pricing around $400.

    Booking Features:
    In this particular feature, users can quickly check the availability of any doctor and have the appointment fixed at their convenient time. And, it ensures the users a hassle-free yet better management of appointments prior to visiting the place.  This feature can be developed in 22-24 hours and the cost is around $800.

    An e-Prescription Feature:
    It is a reliable feature of any mHealth mobile app. It lets patients feel comfortable as they can get access to their medication information along with other relevant details, communicate with doctors, look through all prescriptions. This feature also helps the doctors to improve the workflow and patient care quality. The e-prescription can be automatically sent to the drug stores with an in-built pharmacy lookup feature. It’s a way to boost the patient’s belief and satisfaction. This feature’s cost may range from $650-$750 and time will take around 18-20 hours. 

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      An Activity Feed Feature:
      This feature helps to streamline the user activity. Users can check their different activities effortlessly which have been used sequentially. It also shows various topics that users might feel to be relevant. The development timeline for this feature is 7-8 hours and translates into $400.

      The User or Health Dashboard Feature:
      With the help of this feature, users can experience an outstanding and easy-to-use dashboard. It helps them to see charts, track health records, rehab exercises along other relevant details customized as per their activity feeds. Most importantly, a bright, colorful, and user-friendly dashboard should accompany it to gain popularity among users. It may cost around $1200 and the development time is 38-40 hours.

      A “Share Your Progress” Feature:
      A mobile health app must need a “Share Your Progress” feature. This feature makes it easy to track users’ daily, weekly or monthly health progress. Also, it enables to share the progress in the in-app community where users can have healthy competition with each other. So, the users feel comfortable and part of a supportive community. This feature is most useful in fitness or sports apps which takes approximately 7-8 hours to build and the pricing is around $400.

      Medicinal Record and Calculation Feature:
      Medicinal records and calculating the medical expense are significant features for any mHealth app. This feature helps to grow the patient care quality exponentially. It enables the users to calculate their medicine’s price, check how long their prescription will last. Also, helps to track other health-related calculations and maintain accurate online medical records. The development cost of this feature is $1000 and time requires around 30-32 hours.

      Symptoms Checker Feature:
      This is an inevitable feature in any modern health monitoring app. It is designed to provide proper and accurate information in a systematic manner. This feature enables the users to put their symptoms with additional parameters like age, sex, medical history, etc. And, offers them a more precise diagnosis.  It costs around $800 and the development time is 24-25 hours.

      AI Integration Feature:
      A mHealth application tips list should include an AI Integration feature. Artificial intelligence algorithm is the most useful tool if your app has health monitoring or tracking functionalities. This tool ensures fast and easy work of the app and to get the diagnosis as accurate as possible. Such integrations cost get little higher around $4200 and need approx 155-160 hours to develop.

      Chat or Messaging Feature:
      Developing a health app requires integration with chat and messaging features. These features allow the users to immediately contact a doctor and provide a 24*7 convenience communication option to both the patients and doctors. For any sudden illness, it also helps to find a support group and keep the patients away from adversities. It’s necessary for a minimum of 18-20 hours to build this feature and the cost is around $700. 

      Custom Notification and Reminder Feature:
      Most mHealth apps have integrated custom notification and reminder features. These features help users feel confident by eliminating the chances of having human errors in the healthcare process. Through these features, the patients are to be reminded to take the medicines on time or when they should be doing their rehab exercises. It also allows the users to customize their reminders. This feature requires 7-8 hours to build and the charge is around $400.

      Wearable Devises Connection Feature:
      Integrating wearable devices into medical apps offer users to track their activities and exercise schedule. It helps the app to connect with various external gadgets like health watches, bands, or trackers through IoT technology. This feature is best suited for fitness and health monitoring apps. It can cost around $800 and time needs 24-25 hours.

      Patient Privacy Features:
      This feature helps to protect the confidentiality, and integrity of individually identifiable health information. It ensures the patients that the app complies with all HIPAA and FDA guidelines. Basically, this feature is safeguarding patients’ privacy. It may need 15-16 hours to develop, with pricing around $600.

      Blockchain Integration:
      This is an advanced feature of modern healthcare apps. This feature allows for greater security of patient data management, data analysis, and data transfer. It also reduces the number of data breaches, improves the process of clinical trials, and protects networks against fraud. This integration might take up from 32-34 hours and it costs around $1000.

      Cloud Integration:
      A good mHealth application needs to be built with cloud integration. This feature allows the patients to access various kinds of data according to their needs anytime, anywhere. It costs approx $800 and can be built within 24-25 hours.

      Payment Processing Feature:
      The payment processing feature is an integral part of successful applications. This is an in-built and secure payment gateway. It enables the patients to pay their bills quickly and directly from the app. Apart from this, payment through wallet, credit card, or insurance policy feature must be included to make the app more attractive. The cost of this feature may range between $780 to $800 and time may require 24-25 hours. 

      Features of Fitness Apps:

      Cost and Time to develop a fitness App - Infographics
      Cost and Time to develop a fitness App – Infographics

      Compatibility and Synchronization of the Devices:
      This feature allows the users to connect and synchronize with different devices quickly. With the rise of various wearable devices, it’s needed to make sure that the fitness app is compatible with these devices. Adding this feature to the app will increase its efficiency and give an extra edge undoubtedly. It can cost around $600, and the estimated time to build this feature is 15-16 hours.

      Step-Counter/ Pedometer:
      It is an essential feature of any fitness app. It keeps track of many kinds of stuff, including daily steps, physical activity, time active, etc. This easy-to-use feature works by using the built-in sensor and helps the users to meet their fitness goals. Developing this feature may need 7-8 hours, and the price is around $400.

      Heart Rate Monitor:
      Integration of a heart rate monitor can track users’ heartbeat rate variability, the pulse rate, etc at any time, anywhere. And, it provides other key information related to heart metrics using these insights. So, this feature can help them to monitor the intensity of their workouts and help them to achieve the level of fitness they are seeking. It may cost around $400, and the development time is 7-8 hours.

      Food Tracker/ Calorie Counter:
      This feature offers users to log their food intake throughout the day. It also provides intake and the burning of calories. Considering this feature guides the users on the meal plans, healthy eating, the importance of quality foods, and more. Thus, it helps them to get an active and healthy body. The development timeline for this feature is 24-25 hours and translates into $800.

      Water Intake Tracker:
      Water is an important yet neglected component of our diet. So, adding a water intake tracker in the fitness app is a highly recommended feature. It calculates appropriate hydration amounts based on the user’s body weight, general health, or personal goal and reminds them to drink water accordingly. This feature also monitors daily/weekly/monthly water intake and keeps a complete track of the water intake balance. The cost and time for building this feature are $400 and 8 hours respectively.

      Sleep Tracker:
      With this feature, users can understand and improve their sleep habits. It helps to optimize the user’s routine, monitor sleep cycles, identify sleep issues and events during sleep. They can talk to a doctor if having any concerns about sleep quality. It also offers some additional insights into overall health and lifestyle. Basically, the integration offers a wonderful way to stay healthy, happy, and glowing. It costs around $500 and the development time is 10-12 hours.

      Location Tracker:
      While developing a fitness app, incorporating a location tracker can be very beneficial. This functionality offers users to plan walking routes, track their current location, build workouts and record them. With wearable devices, they can also track other activities like steps taken, swimming, cycling, etc more accurately. So, it is a smart solution to track their fitness progression and achieve the target. The development cost of this feature is $600 and time requires around 15-16 hours.

      Online Fitness Consultation/ Diet Consultation:
      Consideration of this feature into a fitness app is increasing at a rapid rate. It provides users to get personalized fitness consultations or nutritional guides from professional experts. Hence, it helps them to achieve their fitness goal and stay healthy. Adding this feature can cost $1000, and time may take around 30-32 hours. 

        Have an app idea? Contact us for a free consultation.

        Personalization:
        Personalization is an integral part of a fitness app. This feature refers to collecting users’ personal information like age, height, gender, weight, and other physical parameters. It helps users to customize their diet, exercise, supplements they need to take, and many more. Thus, it considerably assists them to become more engaged in overall health and achieve their goals. This integration costs approx $500 and can be built within 11-12 hours.

        Gamification:
        This is one of the must-have features of any fitness app. It allows the users to play games, complete a target, get rewards and share with their friends. Also, the app can be more attractive by adding many components such as leader boards, badges, progress bar, etc. Hence, it helps to improve user experience and increase user retention rate. It may need 24-25 hours to develop, with pricing around $800.

        Chat:
        With this feature, users can talk to fitness experts anytime to get an online consultation or workout schedule. If the app doesn’t have live chat options, incorporating a chatbot with pre-programmed responses can also help the users. It will make them feel valued and they will appreciate the app. Moreover, this feature offers to talk with other users and share their experiences and fitness progress. It may cost approx $700 and the development time is around 20 hours.

        Push Notification:
        It has long been a fundamental feature of fitness applications. It helps the users to remember daily workout sessions, medicine dosages, next mealtime, and many other events. The proper use of this feature helps to increase user engagement. But sending too many notifications is not a good idea as it may annoy the user experience. This important feature can cost $400, and time requires 7-8 hours.

        What are the different types of healthcare apps available in the market:

        The marketplace is crowded with a wide range of healthcare mobile apps. In-App store (for both iOS and Android), there are more than 95,000 apps dedicated to the healthcare sector, and approximately 200 new healthcare apps are being built each day. And, we can assume that this number will increase substantially since the Covid-19 pandemic. Let’s now check out various types of healthcare apps for patients and apps for medical professionals available globally:

        Different types of medical or mHealth apps - Compiled by Itobuz Technologies
        Different types of medical or mHealth apps

        Apps for clinical use and assistance in diagnosis:
        Mobile apps for clinical use and diagnosis carry significant importance in today’s time. These apps offer symptom monitoring, suggest treatments, personal health record access, reviewing electronic charts and lab test results, and many more. It makes it easier to monitor vital health parameters and allows patients to have affordable healthcare in their hands. This also helps the healthcare workers to improve their workflows to provide faster and better service.

        Application for remote monitoring reminder apps:
        Remote monitoring apps monitor the health of chronically ill patients (like COPD, Diabetes, Heart disease), track their data, and help them with independent living. These apps assist in better access to the healthcare team, provide public health surveillance, aid in community data collection, improve quality of care, and so on. It has been used to check ECG reports, check oxygen levels, track heart rate and heart-rate variability. These apps also provide appointment reminders and daily prescription reminders which help to automate overall health care and track drug doses. Thus, it allows you to put your treatment’s success into perspective. 

        Although potentially beneficial, these apps can be limited by many factors such as the patient’s ability to utilize the device accurately, internet reliability, etc.

          Have an app idea? Contact us for a free consultation.

          Applications for easy medical referencing:
          These kinds of apps names speak by themselves. It provides information on differential diagnosis, treatment, pill identification, medicine interaction, and specialized medical referencing materials. It also enables the healthcare workers in evaluation and management coding and effectively streamlines the communication to improve overall patient care.

          Apps for maintaining a healthy lifestyle:
          Healthy lifestyle apps have gained extraordinary popularity in recent years. These apps allow the users to set goals based on their needs and make lifestyle modifications. It is mainly focused on maintaining a healthy diet and developing a training program. This app can be very effective to provide checklists for proper care, tracking fitness, reducing the dose of nicotine consumption, monitoring blood glucose/blood pressure levels, etc. 

          Medical Calculators:
          Medical calculators use standard formulas to determine risk scores and other measures like BMI, BMR, and correct medicine doses. And, this app allows the calculations of heights, weights, indices, etc. It also helps to calculate heart disease and stroke risk based on various patient variables. Therefore, this app enables you to experience the convenience of specialized medical solutions.

          Medical education & teaching apps:
          Other medical apps, such as medical education & teaching apps have become ubiquitous in medical education settings. It is playing an increasingly important role in teaching medical curriculum and for medical students as well. Students can use it for rapid access to educational resources like making basic notes, accessing patients’ health records, knowing their medicines and way of treatment, logging their experiences, and reading interactive case studies

          How much does it cost to make a mobile Health App?

          A superior mobile health app consists of many features and functionalities. And, the cost to build a mobile Health app obviously varies as it depends on several factors, considerations, and price tiers.

          There are a lot of great mobile Health app developers worldwide. Different companies across the world charge between $50 to $250/hour, with an average of $100/hour. Eastern European developers will offer you an average cost for app development: $80–$150/hour, while India-based app developers charges around $30–$90/hour. And, USA is considered to be the most expensive one, the highest development costs will be required with $80-$200/hour.

          The cost also varies upon several other factors such as app design, features, complexity, platform (Android/iOS/Cross-Platform), and the number of integration points. Therefore, it’s quite difficult to provide a precise cost estimate before deciding the types of features and functionalities that you want in your mobile Health app. But you can refer to the image above where the development cost for every feature is mentioned.

          What are the privacy and security standards of developing a health app in different countries?

          The importance of mHealth apps and the question of app privacy and security are increasing simultaneously. Coping up with these changes, protecting some sensitive, personal information like patient history, contact information, address from the cybercriminals; nowadays, health care tech start-ups or the mobile health app development companies are more willing to take care of app security and compliance when developing a health app. To make the apps impregnable, some regulations and compliance are needed to be maintained which used to vary country-wise.

          For the USA; HIPAA regulations, CCPA, HITECH are necessary to follow. Specifically, HIPAA is a US federal law that governs the protection of health information through encryption, authentication, etc. There is also guidance called 2013 MMA guidance issued by FDA that suggests some rules and regulations for some medical condition diagnosis apps. GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is an important set of regulations mandatory for the companies in the European Union. HL7 integration is also an essential standard to define the format for exchanging health-related data. Except that, there are PIPEDA regulations in Canada, the National Cyber Security Centre website in the United Kingdom, the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive in the European Union to protect health-related information religiously.

            Have an app idea? Contact us for a free consultation.

            Therefore, to save health-related information from cryptographic vulnerabilities, data leakage, and to save the penalty charges, mHealth applications should be compliant with the regulations. Because the show must go on!

            Conclusion:

            The healthcare sector has seen seismic changes by harnessing the power of mobile technology. And, mobile Health app development has become instrumental for modern healthcare settings nowadays. These applications guarantee quality healthcare more accessible, increase patient engagement, improve medical experts’ efficiency and provide quality of patient care and convenience desired. Given the advancements of technologies and benefits it provides, it is clear that the future of mHealth mobile apps really promising. So, if you’re passionate about improving patient care through technology, mHealth is the way to meet the ever-changing needs of the patients and stay ahead of competitors.