On-Demand Appointment App for Patients and Doctors

With near-complete digitalization of the economy in all spheres, even the doctor-patient relationship is going in for a rapid transformation. One will always recollect the visits to the doctor’s place for appointments or visiting the outpatient department in polyclinics and nursing homes standing in a queue to seek an appointment for themselves.

Many will recollect not so good memories of those visits to meet the doctors as one had to experience very critical and highly anxious moments. Now those harrowing days will be gone. With the on-demand healthcare app which is a rage these days, better days are ahead. Patient parties can now book appointments for their patients in a much lesser stress-free ambience and state of mind.

The Rapid Advancements in the Medical Field

With the rapid advancement of medical science and the IT industry, the science of medical app development has grown by leaps and bounds. One such pathbreaking development is the doctor’s appointment app. In recent years the growth of healthcare apps sector has been phenomenal. According to recent studies, statistics it has been reported that by the end of next year this market will grow by an annual growth rate of 16%.

Even doctors, medical practitioners and healthcare workers are keen and going two steps ahead to take the best advantage of medical app development. The percentage of smartphone users not only in urban and semi-urban areas but also in the rural belt has increased manifold and a recent study confirmed that almost 80% of physicians and healthcare professionals are using on-demand healthcare app on a regular basis.

The ongoing global pandemic has changed the entire profile of health history and more so of the usage of software in the health care sector. Many governments have come out with their apps like Aarogya Setu in India, Salud Responde in Spain and Kwarantanna Domowa of Poland. Of course one can always access the COVID 19N Tracker symptom under the aegis of the World Health Organisation { WHO}.

Even WHO has a chatbox exclusively on Corona Virus. The question here now is how will any other person who is not suspected to be infected by COVID show a physician? Here comes the stellar role of the doctor’s appointment app which will play a pioneering role in the days to come.

Also Read: How Coronavirus affected the IT or Technology Sector?

Various types of revenue models for the software needed for doctor’s booking:

• • Commission-based – In this system, the doctor whose name features in the app agrees to pay to the app owner a pre-decided amount as commission for the number of patients he is consulted through the app. In return, the doctor concerned gets a huge exposure to the patient parties.

• • Retainer or paid listing based – In this system, the doctor gets his name enlisted in the detailed list of doctors for a fixed amount of pre-decided fees. This is a boon for all those doctors who have still to put a lot in their career graph.

• • In-app advertisements – Every day the healthcare brands look for one or the other innovative ways to publicise their products. Most of the time they cannot advertise in the normal media. Here is a very suitable publicity medium for them to promote their brands for a certain fee.

For a doctor’s appointment app, here are the advantages for both the doctors and the patient parties –

For doctors –

• • Exposure to an incessant number of patient parties

• • All-time exposure to patients

• • Can work remotely

• • Very good in times of crisis like COVID 19

• • Present online

• • Getting accustomed to a greater number of patients.

For patients-

• • No standing in queue

• • All detailed information about the specific doctor, his experience, qualifications, fees can be known beforehand

• • Access to an increasing number of qualified doctors

• • Much more economical and time-saving

Salient features of the on-demand Doctor Appointment App–

– Profile – In this both the doctor and the patient has to fill up the slots which give detailed information about themselves-

– Doctor – Photo, location and nearest landmark, star ratings, details of  experience

– Patient – Name, mobile number, address, personal detailed information.

– Searching – The patient can access the app and get to know about the doctor, his specialisation, his experience, the available time for the visit, his fees, whether attached to any nursing home etc.

– Booking of appointment – As soon as the patient gets feedback on all his queries he sends a booking request. In case the doctor is available, he can consult the doctor for anything else.

– Payment system – Payment option through card or any other payment wallet should be mentioned. The system should be scam free and with minimum time possible.

– Online prescription – Should the situation so require, online prescriptions too can be worked out.

– SOS cases – In case of an emergency, this feature should enable to contact the doctor even at odd hours or to call the ambulance or to get in touch with the nursing home.

– GPS Tracking – In case of a serious emergency the tracking will allow both the patient party as well as the doctor to know each other’s location.

– Live video conference – In case of situations where both the parties virtually want to see each other for a discussion this feature will be very helpful.

– Sharing of earlier prescriptions – In cases where the doctor needs the earlier reports and prescriptions this feature will come in very handy

– Push notification- Even if the cases where either the doctor or the patient parties are not using the phone at that particular moment, a push notification will give the required information.

To convert the app to a successful business proposition, the following points need to be seriously looked into –

–  Network and the list of doctors need to be excellent. The doctors should be given incentives like better visibility, payment options etc.

–  The app owner must check the track record of the doctors

– Some sort of incentives need to be given to the users

– Payment selection module should be carefully chosen

– The best available technology resources should be chosen after many brainstorming

The technology stacks –

• • Payment modes – Google Money, PayPal, Stripe, Braintree e-wallets etc

• • Database – Postgres, Integration, Cassandra etc

• • Push notification – Push, io, Twilio

• • In-app calling and messaging – Twilio, Nexmo

• • Real-time Analytic – IBM, Big Data, Flink, Spark, Apache

• • Cloud – Amazon, Google, Azure

What are the steps involved in conceptualizing a doctor booking app –

–  First and foremost one has to decide on the concept of the app, the target audience and its traits

– Business analysts to work on the wireframe and diagrams who will give a clear cut idea

– A team of well-experienced app developers needs to be hired at this stage for app development. It needs to be decided whether the apps will be downloaded from Google Play Store or Apple Appstore.

– Design of the app at this stage is very essential.

– Test launching is required after this stage rigorously to find out if any lacunae is there and to rectify it before the final launch.

Costing –

• • Number of creative hours involved

• • Complexity of the app

• • Hourly rate

• • Technology stacks

• • Number of platforms

Takeaway

The on-demand mobile healthcare development app has an extremely bright future and the medical fraternity is going to be changed dramatically when the app makes giant strides in the market.

Are you looking for a Healthcare App Development Company? Rlogical Techsoft Pvt Ltd delivers end-to-end healthcare and fitness mobile app development solutions to medical practitioners worldwide. Our company hires dedicated app developers who build on-demand appointment app for doctors and patients.