Often, the biggest stumbling block in healthcare app development isn't a lack of innovative ideas but rather the associated costs — or an insufficient understanding of them. The multifaceted and ever-changing nature of healthcare app development costs can leave startups and healthcare organizations uncertain about budget allocation and project timelines. This uncertainty, in turn, can lead to delays, budget overruns, and, ultimately, project flops.
That is why we'd like to break down the key factors influencing healthcare app development costs. Drawing on 300+ projects, we’ll also outline the most effective cost reduction techniques.
How the state of the healthcare market impacts development costs
Although your unique project and business needs are what has the final say in the development costs, broader healthcare market trends also play a significant role in shaping the budget. Market-wise, the costs of healthcare app development are driven by three core factors:
Demand
In 2024, the global digital health market size was estimated at $335.51 billion. By 2034, it’s projected to surpass $1,080.21 billion, growing at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2024 to 2034. In the United States, 43% of the population used health apps in 2024. Globally, the number of users in the digital health market is also growing. By 2029, it is expected to reach 2.69 billion — compared with 2.01 billion in 2024.
In 2023, mobile users spent $716 per minute on healthcare apps, totaling $377 million – a 19% year-over-year increase and the highest per-minute spending since at least 2019.
The need for advanced features
These days, it pays for both startups and healthcare organizations to implement advanced medical technologies. AI-enabled digital health startups bagged $3.3 billion in venture funding from January to October 2024, accounting for a whopping 36% of overall funding. Also, 94% of healthcare organizations employ AI/ML in some capacity — which makes those technologies almost a fixture (and a quite pricey one) in the industry.
Shifting patient and provider needs
As 70% of patients demand personalized healthcare experiences, telemedicine visits grow, and the remote patient monitoring market is expected to increase from $39.54 billion in 2023 to $77.90 billion by 2029, apps must incorporate more complex features. AI-powered recommendations, scalable infrastructure, robust security measures, and seamless integration with medical records and devices help healthcare apps live up to the current needs of patients and providers.
Benefits of developing a healthcare app
As you assess the affordability and feasibility of your future medical app, you might wonder if it’s worth the investment and time spent on development. More importantly, you might also consider its potential to achieve the defined business objectives, which is a critical factor in securing stakeholder buy-in for healthcare organizations and demonstrating worthiness to investors for startups. Well, we brought the receipts, so you don’t have to.
| Benefits for healthcare providers | Benefits for patients |
|---|---|
1. Reduced healthcare costs By streamlining processes, enabling efficient resource allocation, and facilitating remote care, digital health solutions can to significantly reduce healthcare costs. For example, AI-driven medical diagnosis apps may reduce treatment costs by up to 50%. | 1. Enhanced accessibility of care In the U.S., 1 in 4 adults skip or postpone getting healthcare services due to their costs. What's more, there’s expected to be a shortage of about 100,000 critical healthcare workers by 2028. Digital healthcare apps offer a more affordable pathway to care, with remote consultations and reduced operational costs. |
2. Expanded patient reach Remote consultations, patient portals, appointment scheduling applications, medication management tools, and other mobile health solutions allow providers to serve more patients beyond healthcare settings, office hours, and geographical limitations. | 2. Reduced wait times and easier appointment scheduling Patients have to wait of 38 days on average to schedule the third next available appointment, while some telemedicine services provide real-time consultations, with waits of about 20 minutes. Digital scheduling tools also allow 24/7 access, enabling patients to book appointments at their convenience. |
3. Enhanced patient outcomes Digital health tools enable easier and more comprehensive health data collection, allowing HCPs to better understand individual patient needs. They also remove the gaps between both sides of care, facilitating easier collaboration between doctors and patients. | 3. Greater autonomy Healthcare apps provide patients with the tools and data to manage their health. Thus, they enable patients to actively monitor their health, track symptoms, manage chronic conditions, connect with their healthcare providers, and make informed decisions about their treatment. |
4. More effective workflows
| 4. Increased patient satisfaction
Healthcare applications transform the doctor-patient relationship and shift them towards a patient-first format. For example, telemedicine and remote patient monitoring solutions improved patient satisfaction rates from 80% to 95% among patients with chronic diseases. |
7 crucial factors influencing your healthcare app development costs
When our team prepares an initial estimation for your healthcare mobile app, we usually take into account the following factors.
Project complexity
The more complex your project is shaping up to be, the more effort your development team will put into it. Essentially, project complexity can be divided into two groups: functional complexity and technical complexity.
Your project is considered to be functionally complex when it’s not only feature-rich but also has complex interactions between components. Sophisticated underlying business rules and logic required to make your features work also add to the overall project complexity.
Technical complexity involves third-party integrations (EHRs, payment systems, etc.) and integrations with third-party APIs and services. The variety of data sources (e.g., wearable devices, electronic health records, patient apps, and others) also contribute to the technical complexity of your app.
Target platform choice
Single-platform native healthcare mobile app development (iOS or Android) requires higher upfront investments than cross-platform native development, as your healthcare app development team needs to develop and maintain a single codebase for each chosen platform. If your app needs to integrate with medical hardware, such as wearables and devices, your development costs might also increase.
As for web development, PWAs (progressive web apps), SPAs (single-page applications), and traditional websites also require different amounts of effort, hence demanding different levels of initial investment.
Technology stack and innovative technologies
Selecting an optimal technology stack is one of the most important decisions one makes during the development process. Your app’s performance, scalability, security, integration capabilities, and maintainability hinges on the right choice of programming languages, frameworks, and databases. The maturity and popularity of a tech stack are the core cost drivers. The more established and popular the chosen technologies are, the easier it is to find affordable talent.
The cost of developing a healthcare app also depends on the implementation of cutting-edge techs such as AI, gen AI, IoT, and others, as well as the data management effort, infrastructure costs, and testing and validation processes inherent in the implementation. Keep in mind that every implementation of advanced technologies should be assessed for feasibility – you don’t have to integrate the bells and whistles just for the sake of it.
Regulatory compliance and security
Healthcare applications that handle sensitive patient data are subject to regulatory compliance, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), FDA (Food and Drug Administration), Medical Device Regulation (MDR), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and others.
To make your healthcare application compliant, your development team must perform security assessments, implement specific data security measures such as encryption, access controls, and others, and run continuous audits to ensure always-on compliance. All these activities require dedicated effort, thus potentially increasing development time, legal fees, and testing costs.
Design and user experience
Sophisticated designs with complex animations, custom illustrations, and interactive elements increase the price tag because they require additional development time and design expertise. If your application caters to multiple user groups, it requires a different set of design elements for each side — another consideration to keep in mind when calculating a tentative budget.
Healthcare applications should bridge tech gaps, not spawn them. That’s why your app design should be developed with accessibility in mind for a diverse range of users. Adhering to accessibility guidelines such as WCAG and ADA also requires additional development and testing effort from your team.
Development team and location
When hiring a healthcare app development team for your project, you have two options: you can either build your own in-house development team or outsource the development. An in-house development team offers a higher level of control compared to outsourcing but comes with the overhead of hiring, managing, and retaining skilled in-house talent. Plus, the current tech talent crunch makes assembling the entire team on-site challenging and time-consuming.
An outsourced healthcare app development team might not offer the same level of oversight as internal hiring, but it relieves you of headaches related to team management, day-to-day management of the development process, and the associated administrative burdens such as payroll and benefits.
More importantly, outsourcing can help companies save up to 70% of operational expenses in the long run. Outsourced healthcare app developers usually have lower rates, allowing companies to secure great talent at a fraction of the cost. For example, hiring an iOS developer in Poland costs $50 to $70 per hour, whereas U.S.-based iOS talent sells for $80 to $120 per hour.
Post-launch support and maintenance
The healthcare app development process is never-ending. After the deployment, your healthcare app demands ongoing upkeep that includes troubleshooting, new feature implementation, security patches, OS updates, and other maintenance activities.
Having a maintenance strategy in place will help your development team address app vulnerabilities before they cause damage and help them keep your application up to the mark in the competitive healthcare sector.
Healthcare app development cost based on app type
The average cost of healthcare app development also depends on the specific application category. Below, we've provided the app development cost breakdown for each app category. Keep in mind that each project is unique, so your estimation will likely differ slightly.
Telemedicine applications
- Development cost: $75,000 – $250,000
- Development timeline: 4 – 8 months
- App examples: Doctor on Demand, Teladoc, and Amwell
Telemedicine apps enable healthcare professionals to remotely deliver consultations, diagnosis, and follow-up care.
A typical telemedicine app includes the following features:
- Video/audio consultations — facilitate interaction between patients and doctors.
- Appointment management — used to schedule and manage in-app appointments.
- Secure messaging — allows for asynchronous communication between the two sides of care.
- Integration with EHR — allows doctors to access a patient's medical history during virtual consultations.
- E-prescriptions — enable a healthcare provider to send a digital prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point of care.
- Payment integration — allows patients to securely pay for consultations directly from the app.
Related: How to develop a telemedicine application: Trends, features and costs
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems
- Development cost: $50,000 – $200,000
- Development timeline: 4 – 7 months
- App examples: Vivify Health, BioTelemetry, and CareSimple
RPM solutions rely on wearable technology and mobile health apps to collect patient data, monitor patients' health conditions remotely, and perform timely healthcare interventions.
If you’re building an MVP for an RPM system, here are the features you’d want to include:
- Device connectivity — integration with a wide range of medical devices allows RPM solutions to transmit more comprehensive health data.
- Data analytics — advanced algorithms help make sense of wearable data and present it in a digestible format to care groups.
- Telehealth features — facilitate two-way communication between patients and doctors.
- EHR integration — enables a seamless integration of RPM data into EHRs for a 360-degree understanding of the patient’s condition.
Related: Guide to remote patient monitoring software development
Mental health applications
- Development cost: $25,000 – $100,000
- Development timeline: 3 – 5 months
- App examples: Calm, Headspace, and BetterHelp
Designed to deliver peace of mind and well-being to users, mental health applications support individuals on their mental health journeys. Depending on the app’s purpose, a mental health application can assist users in connecting with therapists, developing mindfulness and relaxation skills, managing depression, and more.
Functionality differs based on the type of the application, but many mental health apps integrate the following basic features:
- Self-monitoring tools — symptom, mood, and behavior tracking allow individuals to log their mental health data to better understand the patterns and triggers.
- Guided meditation and mindfulness exercises — led by a teacher, in person, or via audio or video – help individuals alleviate stress and relax the mind.
- Audio/video calls and chats — this feature establishes two-way communication between users and therapists.
- Goal setting — allows users to set a measurable goal on the path to their mental well-being and track their progress.
- Wearable integration — used to gain deeper insights into physiological data and its potential correlation with mental health conditions.
- Smart chatbots and coaches – provide immediate support and assistance and aid in delivering effective and practical evidence-based therapies.
Related: How to build a mental health app in 2025 and actually succeed in the market
Medical billing apps
- Development cost: $40,000 – $150,000
- Development timeline: 4 – 8 months
- App examples: DrChrono, CureMD, and CareCloud
Medical billing apps ease the administrative burden on healthcare professionals by automating financial tasks and medical billing processes. These apps can be standalone or blended into larger systems.
Medical billing apps usually comprise the following core features:
- Patient intake management — automatically captures accurate demographic, insurance, and medical history information.
- Claims management — enables healthcare providers to process and submit patient insurance claims electronically.
- Revenue cycle management — aids healthcare professionals in billing, tracking, and collecting incoming payments.
- Automated accounting — takes over the admin tasks by generating invoices, managing accounts receivable, and reconciling bank statements.
- Advanced reporting — gives healthcare providers a snapshot of the billing data, KPIs, and all things revenue cycle.
Medical imaging and diagnostic tools
- Development cost: $70,000 – $500,000
- Development timeline: 6 – 14 months
- App examples: OsiriX, GE Healthcare PACS and New Lantern
Medical imaging apps can help deliver more advanced tools for image visualization, increase diagnostic accuracy with AI, and streamline routine tasks such as image annotation and report generation.
Such apps come in different flavors yet might share the following common features:
- Image acquisition and management — enable seamless integration of DICOM images from various sources and help with image manipulation (quality enhancement, image segmentation, etc.).
- AI-supplemented analysis — draws on AI algorithms to detect anomalies, however subtle.
- Secure image sharing — enables secure sharing of images and reports with other healthcare professionals and patients.
Fitness and wellness apps
- Development cost: $30,000 – $120,000
- Development timeline: 3 – 5 months
- App examples: MyFitnessPal, Strava, and Fitbit
Fitness and wellness apps help users stay mentally and physically active, lead healthier lifestyles, and come across novel fitness and wellness experiences.
A set of must-have features depends on the app subcategory, but typically, this app cohort thrives on the following functionality:
- On-demand workouts — a library of fitness classes that a user can access at any time.
- Personalized workout plans — a fitness routine tailored to the specific user's needs, goals, and preferences.
- Activity tracking — allows the app to track the steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, heart rate, and other physiological data, usually with the help of wearable devices.
- Nutrition tracking — monitors user’s dietary intake.
- Goal setting — enables users to set specific, measurable fitness goals and track their progress.
- Gamification — leverages game mechanics such as leaderboards, badges, group challenges, and more to motivate users.
Related: How to create a fitness app: Main steps, features and cost
Clinical decision support systems (CDSS)
- Development cost: $100,000 – $500,000
- Development timeline: 10 – 16 months
- App examples: UpToDate, Corti, and ClinicalKey
Serving as medical co-pilots for overstretched healthcare professionals, CDSS apps gear up the former for faster, more accurate, and more informed clinical decisions.
Key features of CDSS apps might be as follows:
- Dosage calculations — assist with accurate medication dosing based on patient factors.
- AI-based diagnostic support — suggests differential diagnoses, offers relevant tests and interprets diagnostic results.
- Clinical guidelines — provides access to up-to-date clinical guidelines and best practices for various medical conditions.
EHR / EMR applications
- Development cost: $150,000 – $500,000
- Development timeline: 10 – 18 months
- App examples: Epic Systems, Cerner, and Allscripts
While EHR apps give healthcare providers on-the-go access to complete medical histories across different providers, EMR applications store medical data generated within a particular organization.
To pull their weight, EHR/EMR apps contain the following features:
- Secure patient data storage — provides centralized access to all patient records.
- Clinical documentation — offers templates, macros, or voice recognition capabilities to document patient encounters.
- Billing and coding — enable healthcare professionals to generate and submit insurance claims.
- E-prescription — empowers doctors to prescribe medications to pharmacies.
- Clinical image capture — allows frontline clinicians to immediately and securely upload clinical images.
- Scheduling — allows doctors to add, delete, and reschedule patient appointments as needed.
ePrescription (eRx) apps
- Development cost: $30,000 – $150,000
- Development timeline: 3 – 6 months
- App examples: Surescripts, DoseSpot, and DrFirst
As the name implies, eRx applications are designed to streamline prescriptions, allowing doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and dentists to write and renew prescriptions directly from the app.
The core feature of eRx apps is electronic prescription generation, which allows healthcare professionals to create and send digital prescriptions directly to the chosen pharmacy. Such apps can also include drug interaction checking, formulary checks, and controlled substance management.
Medication management applications
- Development cost: $25,000 – $100,000
- Development timeline: 2 – 6 months
- App examples: MediSafe, MyTherapy, EveryDose
Medication management applications are developed to improve medication adherence rates among patients, simplify complex medication regimens, and help patients manage their medications more effectively.
On a mission to increase medication adherence, medication management apps usually include the following features:
- Medication reminders — prompt users to take medications when necessary.
- Dosage trackers — keep track of medications across multiple medicine schedules.
- Drug interaction checker — identifies multi-drug interactions.
- Pill identification and dosage instructions — identify specific medications and ensure safe and effective medication use.
- Refill reminders — notify users when their refills are due.
Chronic disease management apps
- Development cost: $30,000 – $200,000
- Development timeline: 3 – 9 months
- App examples: MySugr, AsthmaMD, Heart360
Chronic disease management apps are designed to help patients, caregivers, and care teams manage long-term illnesses and prevent them from progressing to a life-threatening or debilitating level.
Such healthcare mobile applications typically include symptom tracking, medication management, EHR and wearable integrations, remote monitoring, and communication features.
Medical reference apps
- Development cost: $30,000 – $100,000
- Development timeline: 2 – 5 months
- App examples: Medscape, Epocrates, DynaMed
Akin to knowledge hubs, medical reference apps equip healthcare professionals with up-to-date, evidence-based information to help them make the best clinical decisions.
Medical reference apps can contain the following building blocks:
- Disease information — allows healthcare professionals to look up detailed information on various medical conditions.
- Clinical guidelines — equips users with evidence-based guidelines from trusted resources.
- Medical calculators — give medical professionals tools to calculate dosages and other medical parameters.
- Integrated drug database — provides information on indications, dosages, side effects, interactions, contraindications, and available formulations.
Women's health apps
- Development cost: $30,000 – $150,000
- Development timeline: 2 – 6 months
- App examples: Flo, Ovia Health, OvuSense
Femtech applications are healthcare applications geared towards women’s health. Women’s health apps include fertility apps, period tracking applications, pregnancy apps, and other solutions.
Depending on the type, femtech apps can revolve around these features:
- Period tracking — facilitates tracking and prediction of menstrual cycles for women.
- Symptom tracking — allows users to log and track PMS symptoms or symptoms related to reproductive health conditions.
- Pregnancy and postpartum support — functionality such as fetal development tracking, contraction monitoring, and others, designed to help women manage multiple aspects of the pregnancy and postpartum period.
- Birth control reminders — remind users to take their pills and track the remaining quantity.
Health education and training apps
- Development cost: $25,000 – $100,000
- Development timeline: 2 – 5 months
- App examples: Osmosis, Complete Anatomy, Medscape Education
Whether it’s a CME app, a medical networking app, or a surgery simulation setup, healthcare training solutions help healthcare professionals, medical assistants, and medical students hone their skills, train, and get whatever guidance they need to deliver better care.
The feature lineup varies greatly by the application and can fold:
- Personalized learning capabilities — adjust learning paths and experiences to each user.
- Interactive content — includes multiple learning modes, such as gamified elements, multimedia learning, and more.
- Collaboration and communication features — connect users with the healthcare industry community, allowing them to exchange knowledge and professional opinions.
Strategies for reducing healthcare app development costs
As a company with over 13 years of experience, we understand how important it is to optimize the cost to develop a digital solution. Building on our experience, here are the strategies that can help you spend fewer dollars without doing less.
Conduct thorough market research and user needs analysis
To build the right product for the right audience and avoid costly rework down the road, make sure to corroborate your healthcare app idea with real market and user data. Product discovery sessions will help you establish a working definition of your target user needs and make sure you build the exact set of features that move the needle for your target audience.
Prioritize developing an MVP and focus on core features
Don’t build the entire application on your first try. Instead, determine high-value features that are absolutely essential to making your product work and test your core hypotheses about user needs and market demand with a minimal viable product. The MVP approach will allow you to cut the initial development cost, validate the app’s idea, and gather early user feedback to build upon.
Benefit from existing pre-built solutions and open-source components
Whenever possible, opt for pre-made solutions and open-source options. By leveraging off-the-rack UI components, health-specific libraries, AI solutions, and more, you can accelerate the development costs and set your project on the path to success without breaking the bank. However, make sure your team checks each open-source and pre-made solution for compliance and security, as these are key to your healthcare development project.
Choose cross-platform development over native when possible
We often recommend our healthcare clients opt for cross-platform technologies instead of native ones to optimize their MVP development costs. Although cross-platform app development has some platform limitations, it’s a cost-effective option to get your app off the ground as it allows you to cover multiple platforms with one codebase.
Minimize the number of integrated wearable devices
To balance the cost, reduce the vulnerability surface, and simplify the development process, you can start with a limited number of essential devices and gradually expand integration as needed. Identifying the right selection requires significant research effort from your team, where you consider the unique needs of your target audience and the data necessary for your app to function properly.
Prioritize interoperability early
If you need your app to communicate with other healthcare systems without expensive, bolt-on integration solutions, you should stick to standardized protocols and avoid custom integrations when possible. Common data interoperability standards in healthcare include HL7, DICOM, ICD-10, and CDT, so make sure your app adheres to these standards wherever applicable.
Use a unified communication protocol for all your devices, if possible
By implementing a single communication protocol for all your devices, you can bring down licensing costs and lower maintenance costs after your solution has been released.
Emphasize regulatory compliance from the start
Making your app compliant might seem expensive, but non-compliance is even more so. To avoid hefty penalties and reputation damage, identify the applicable regulations from the very beginning and ensure your app has the necessary safeguards to qualify as compliant.
Opt for an experienced healthcare app development partner
Collaborating with an experienced healthcare development partner may cost more initially but pays off long-term. Seasoned tech companies know the hidden obstacles of healthcare app development and have a library of pre-built architectures and solutions that can be repurposed for your project to cut costs.
Pre-launch pilots and run tests with healthcare partners
Before the app launch, pre-enroll a group of early users who will test your product before it’s released to the public. You can collaborate with healthcare partners, such as clinics, labs, and more, to assemble test groups and get professional feedback on your solution. Such a strategy can help you identify areas for improvement and reduce the risk of costly post-launch issues.
It pays to develop a high-quality healthcare application
When it comes to healthcare app development costs, there’s no easy answer. Everything from the type of your app down to the exact integrations your app needs impacts the total amount and makes it hard to pin down the number upfront. When you develop a healthcare mobile or web app, it’s important to stay cost-conscious but prioritize quality and regulatory expertise over price. This ensures you're not sacrificing long-term success for short-term savings and helps your app remain sustainable long after its release.
If you need a ballpark estimate for your healthcare project, drop us a line, and our team will get back to you.
