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How to Build a Telemedicine Service App Like mPharma, a Telehealth Pioneer

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DhiWise

November 25, 2021
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DhiWise

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November 25, 2021
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The COVID -19 pandemic has triggered the shift of the healthcare industry to telemedicine platform development. Online healthcare services became a must-have in situations like pandemics.

About mPharma

mPharma is a Ghanaian health-tech start-up that has come up with the vision to not cease until every person on the continent has access to safe and affordable medicine. It is a major step in the digital transformation of the healthcare sector. 

“A world where a mother has to choose between the medication for her health or education for her children is an unjust world.”– Gregory Rockson, co-founder and CEO, mPharma

mPharma is set to open 100 virtual centers across seven markets in Africa over the next six months. Its end goal is to deliver primary care in the communities they serve by leveraging the pharmacies as a virtual consultation that lacks in most telemedicine structures, making mPharma’s telemedicine unique. 

In this article, we will learn how we can build a Telemedicine application like mPharma, the key features of the app, the application tech stack, and the cost of building the application. 

However, before starting, let us understand why to build a telemedicine application.

Why build telemedicine applications?  

Telemedicine applications offer a wide range of benefits to patients and healthcare providers. 

In the case of mPharma app, the online service can be highly helpful in sub-Saharan Africa which bears the highest disease burden in the world. 

It is developed to potentially solve the issue of a broken drug supply chain. So when the disease rises, the drug should easily get into the hands of those who need them most. 

The application makes the medicine available and accessible for all irrespective of their demographics and background. It is beneficial to the people living in remote areas and the people with special needs. Also, the service is convenient and cost-efficient.

Building such an application not only improves the way healthcare services are provided but also simplifies the issues related to medical record management and monitoring. Furthermore, the Telemedicine app helps to bridge the gap between doctors and patients, doctors can examine more cases without leaving home for work. 

Overall, it allows the professionals to improve the existing medical app infrastructure and develop a better-customized healthcare solution with advanced technologies.

Building a telemedicine application: app type, and key features

What can be more fascinating than the patients getting treatment in emergencies without visiting the clinics, doctors remotely accessing patients’ health data, monitoring their progress, and providing them real-time guidance?

Getting appointments, check-ups, medicine reminders, and medical supervision will be facilitated with a single click with the telemedicine app. 

The telemedicine service application comprises three apps, 

  1. App for Healthcare Providers
  2. App for Users
  3. Admin Panel Application

Let's go through each app version.

1. App for Healthcare Providers

The app builds for doctors, medical professionals, and pharmacists requires customized features that can address particular medical needs. Here are the unique features of the Healthcare provider app.

  • Patient monitoring

The feature helps healthcare professionals to keep an eye on the patient’s health condition during the treatment. Also, it helps to store patients’ medical information such as test reports. 

  • Healthcare reference and database

The feature enables healthcare providers to keep all the data in one place. It keeps the doctors updated on the latest medical knowledge and includes information for different diseases, medical conditions, medicines, and prescriptions.

  • Doctor profile, appointment, and clinical assistance

The feature helps to maintain doctor profiles, make appointments, notify patients, change schedules, and more.

  • Patient interaction, prescription, and advice

Doctors can have audio/video communication with Patients with a virtual consultation. 

  • Patient redirection

Doctors can Redirect patients to another doctor if a different treatment is required from a specialized professional.

  • Professional networking

Healthcare professionals can exchange knowledge, ask questions and interact with the community. 

These are the features we generally find in almost every Telemedicine application. But it’s upon you to add unique features that make your app stand out from the crowd.

 

2. App for Users

These features cater to both patients and general users who want to live healthy life. 

  • Patient profile

Patients are required to insert basic info like name, phone number, and photo to create a platform profile.

  •  Request/ Appointment form

To get a consultation, a person should fill in a request form specifying city, language, field of medicine, and disease details. One can also mark the request as urgent in case of an emergency.

  • Request/Appointment status

Depending on the processing stage, request status varies between urgent, pending, and finished.

  •  Doctor consultation

All patients can get virtual therapy via video/audio communication channels.

  • Prescription management

After consultation, the patient can get a digital prescription from the doctors that can be tracked and edited by the doctors.

  • Patient health education

This feature helps to educate patients about different health conditions by sharing useful and up-to-date information. 

  • Payment gateway

It enables patients to pay in safe and convenient ways (wallets, credit/debit cards, net banking, etc.) using the latest digital payment features. Patients can also access billing details for documentation purposes. 

  •  Reviews and  rating

Through this feature, patients can provide valuable feedback and add reviews and share their stories with other patients, enabling other patients to make better decisions about treatment. This helps to build credibility and patient loyalty to healthcare services.

3. Admin Panel Application

  • Professional license validity and verification

To ensure quality service healthcare professionals must provide qualification certificates, medical licenses, and other required documents. All these documents will be cross-checked by Admin.

  • App content moderation

Admin can manage app content to maintain the platform updated and performant. 

In the case of mPharam the application has the unique feature of collaborating the pharmacy and healthcare providers. If you want to build an app for pharmacy, to provide medicines to patients you can add one more app to the above project.  

Telemedicine application tech stack

Following are the technologies that can be used to build your Telemedicine application 

  • React.js - For front-end development
  • Node.js - for Backend development
  • PostgreSQL- Database
  • Amazon S3- For data retrieval and storage
  • Cloudflare CDN- For Ultrafast static and dynamic content delivery
  • GitHub and GitLab- Collaboration and Sharing

Other than the above technologies you can use other advanced technologies to enhance your app capabilities. 

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Internet of Things (IOTs)
  • Remote Patient Monitoring
  • Blockchain
  • Data Analytics

The use of technology depends on the features you want to add to your application, and its complexity. 

The average cost of building a Telemedicine application

The cost of building telemedicine app development depends on various factors such as the number of features, development team, hours of development, and compliance level.

Just building MVP for the Telemedicine application that includes a doctor/healthcare provider app, patient app, and Admin panel in a single platform can cost you anywhere between $60000 to $80000 on average. 

If you exceed the features and additional applications in the project will increase the cost to double. Also, the average development time can vary between 3 to 6 months but building the final product can take up to a year.  

The bottom line

The Pandemic has made everyone realize there is a need for a huge change in the online medical platform infrastructure. The technology helps improve the healthcare system by allowing access to medicines, treatment, and information with a click in emergencies. 

Patients and healthcare providers both can save their time through online audio/ video consultations regardless of the demographic situation. 

Further, there is huge cost saving by lowering the cost of operating clinics, and patient transportation. 

If you want to quick-start your Telemedicine app development, try DhiWise! It provides the best features to accelerate your app development, advanced technology support, an intuitive platform, and a shorter learning curve.

Moreover, the platform provides you with the ready to use app templates and a screen library for app development. To build an app like mPharma use Medics Medical app UI Kit by DhiWise. 

To explore more about DhiWise click here