Medical mobile app development: mHealth market growth, current state, and main objectives

We’re here to make things clearer. We’ll talk about prospects for mHealth market growth, different types of medical apps, the challenges of developing one, and emerging medical app development trends.

mHealth market size and benefits of medical application development

When breaking into an industry, it’s important to see if it’s relevant and to find out whether there’s enough demand for your product. In the case of mHealth, you need to answer the following questions:

• What are the benefits of mHealth apps for users?
• How will your product help potential users?

mHealth products are able to:

• Minimize the risks of duplicate medical records and errors by providing access to real-time shared data.
• Contribute to the delivery of integrated care. Digital health solutions can monitor patients in real-time by collecting and analyzing their health metrics through smart wearable devices. Connected medical solutions are of great value for preventive care, remote clinical monitoring, and chronic disease management.
• Make healthcare more accessible. With mHealth, people living in rural areas, physically disabled people, and elderly people can easily gain access to medical care. As for healthcare practitioners, they can reach wider audiences (even at the international level).
• Allow patients to take control of their health, communicate with their doctors when necessary, and monitor their own medical data.

Digital healthcare is becoming more and more popular among patients. Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, MA, MHSA, a health economist and communicator, states that almost 2 billion consumers globally used eHealth devices and services as of January 2023.

According to the Deloitte surveys, the adoption of virtual visits by consumers has been also rising, since 2018. 80% of consumers who had a virtual visit would select to have another, especially the younger generations, 86% of Gen Z, and 83% of millennials, and patients with chronic diseases, 88%.

Another aspect that experienced a considerable increase was the consumers’ willingness to share their data. Pre-pandemic statistics demonstrated the decline in all the measured fields, except health care research. Nevertheless, during the pandemic, the consumers’ willingness to share data in every measured field increased.

Consumers want virtual care services, and many would pick the virtual channels for basic care services, and even for specialty care. 

• 64% would get health and wellness advisories virtually
• 54%  would monitor ongoing health issues through at-home devices  remotely
• 39% would choose virtual for routine appointments
• 23% are open to getting diagnosed virtually for illnesses, diseases, and disorders
• 19% are open to virtual appointments with medical specialists for diagnosis or acute care

Source: Accenture Consumer Survey 2020

Now that you have a better understanding of the growth prospects for the digital health market, let’s talk about different types of medical apps.

What types of mHealth apps are there?

Let’s take a moment to review what types of mHealth apps are on the market.

By user type

• Apps for doctors are mainly used for internal purposes, including for accessing databases with medical records and prescriptions, for networking, and for medical reference.
• Apps for patients are typically used for personal health monitoring and keeping records such as calories burned and consumed, weight, blood tests, etc.

By purpose

• Virtual doctor apps are one of the most popular mHealth apps, letting patients access a doctor right from their phone, tablet, or PC.
• Remote monitoring apps allow doctors to keep track of their patients’ health indicators such as heart rate, blood glucose levels, oxygen levels, and blood pressure without an office visit. Electronic health record (EHR) apps, electronic medical record (EMR) apps, and personal health record (PHR) apps are all types of remote monitoring apps.
• Chronic disease management apps enable patients to keep track of and manage chronic conditions and long-term illnesses such as asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and cancer.

Source: buffalonews.com

• Wellness management apps help users build healthy habits, set wellness goals, and monitor sleep, workouts, meals, and more. This category of apps includes diet and nutrition apps, stress relief apps, and workout and fitness apps.

Source: myoptimity.com

• Women’s health trackers include period tracking apps and pregnancy trackers.

Source: helloclue.com

• Pill reminders and medication trackers allow patients to set reminders to take medications and refill prescriptions.

Source: dribbble.com by Elena Sushkova

• General hospital apps are solutions for hospitals that include general information about the facility, booking features, and access to patient profiles.

What are the challenges of healthcare mobile app development?

Despite the benefits that a medical mobile app can offer every stakeholder, there are some concerns to think about before entering the market. Since healthcare is heavily regulated in most parts of the world and since the data being transmitted, gathered, and used is sensitive, protecting this data is a critical part of mHealth app development. It’s therefore common practice among medical app developers to encrypt such data at all stages. 

Additionally, it’s essential to be aware of legal requirements for privacy and to adhere to them to effectively safeguard personal medical data.

There are different standards and laws you’ll need to follow based on the country/countries your app will be used in. Let’s take a moment to review the main standards and laws by country as well as those of universal concern.

United States

If your app is going to cover the US market, it might need to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a law that sets standards for the protection of sensitive medical data.

To understand if your app needs to meet HIPAA standards, examine what kind of data your app is going to store and transfer and see if it handles the data of a covered entity.

It’s important to know how HIPAA defines PHI to understand whether your app needs to be HIPAA-compliant:

PHI is information that relates to the past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition of an individual, which identifies the individual and that is transmitted or maintained by electronic media; or in any other form or medium.

Patient information is regarded as PHI if it’s shared with covered entities. If patient information isn’t shared, it isn’t seen as PHI.

European Union

If your app collects and processes personal data of users from the European Union, it’s subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new privacy regulation in the EU that replaced the 1995 Data Protection Directive. GDPR has been active since May 2018 and applies to companies that deal with the personal information of EU citizens. Note that if your app users are from the European Union, you have to follow the GDPR requirement irrespective of where your business is based.

In articles 5-11, the GDPR outlines six principles for how to best manage and protect personal data:

• Lawful, fair and transparent processing ― Personal data must be processed transparently, lawfully, and fairly.
• Collected for specific purposes ― Personal data must be relevant and limited to the minimum necessary.
• Purpose limitation ― Personal data must be collected and used for explicit, legitimate, and specified purposes and for nothing else.
• Accuracy ― Personal data must be accurate and complete.
  Storage limitation ― Personal data must no longer be retained once you don’t need it for the purposes specified.
• Security ― Personal data must be treated securely and protected from unlawful and unauthorized processing, damage, destruction, and accidental loss.

Source: legalo.co.uk

Canada

If your app’s going to operate in Canada, then you should pay attention to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canadian data protection legislation that was passed in 2000. Unlike HIPAA, PIPEDA applies to all personal data, including health-related and commercial. PIPEDA considers the following data as personally identifiable information (PII): name, age, income, ID numbers, blood type, ethnic origin, evaluations, medical records, opinions, etc.

Australia

Australia’s Privacy Principles (APP) is the privacy legislation you’ll need to comply with if you operate in Australia. This act contains 13 rules on how to handle personal information, covering the following:

• The collection, processing, storage, use, and disclosure of personal data
• An organization’s regulation and accountability
• The correction and integrity of personal data
• The rights of personal data access

Ensuring that your app meets the regulations and guidelines in the countries you’re operating in is another significant factor in a medical mobile app’s success in both national and international markets.

mHealth market forecast: Emerging technologies and trends to watch

As more companies enter this rapidly growing space, innovation is inevitable. By assessing the current state of the market and looking at what is being researched and tested at the moment, we’re able to identify what to expect in the future.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)

According to Markets and Markets, the healthcare AI market is projected to grow from $14.6 billion in 2023 to $102.7 billion by 2028.

AI and ML algorithms provide better ways for identifying conditions and diseases, monitoring health epidemics, predicting the occurrence of future disease risks and developing treatment plans, interpreting test results, detecting irregularities in X-rays and MRI scans, discovering new therapeutics, and more.

According to the Binariks, the top AI apps in healthcare are:

• Robot-assisted surgery
• Virtual assistants
• Administrative workflow assistants
• Connected machines
• Diagnosis
• Clinical trials
• Fraud detection
• Cybersecurity
• Dosage error reduction

Source: Binariks

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) focuses on monitoring, testing, and diagnosing by means of connected smart devices and apps. With IoMT, users can monitor their health and doctors are able to keep track of their patients’ conditions from a distance. Such devices may monitor heart activity, sleep, blood pressure, and glucose levels, count distance, steps, and calories, track oxygen levels, and do a lot more. Take Apple Watch Series 5 as an example. It reads the heart’s electrical signals and alerts users about irregularities like atrial fibrillation and sinus rhythm. In addition to these features, Apple Watch can help users breathe mindfully, track their menstrual cycles, and record workouts.

Source: digitaltechnologynews.com

Blockchain

Lately, blockchain technology in the healthcare sector has become very popular. According to VerifiedMarket Research, the blockchain in healthcare is predicted to reach $7308.32 million by 2028. The benefit of blockchain is that it improves the overall security of managing and sharing personal data.  

These innovations will work to further mHealth, improving overall patient health and facilitating patient-doctor communications as well as increasing efficiency in healthcare organizations.

Want to develop a medical mobile app?

The active penetration of IT in the medical field is a big step toward improving healthcare. mHealth is already helping to prevent serious diseases, monitor health conditions, and track ongoing rehabilitation. Despite the challenges that those in the medical sector face, such as constant updates to regulatory directives and the absence of established security standards, it’s clear that mHealth will be an important part of the future.

Mobile health improves the quality of medicine, reduces costs, and broadens the reach of healthcare. This benefits all users and stakeholders, disrupting the market and making it exciting.

If you want to get involved in healthcare application development but you’re unsure where to start or if you’re looking for a healthcare app development company, our team can help. Get familiar with our healthcare software development offer below for more details regarding custom mHealth app development!