Last Updated | May 29, 2024
In the current digital era, embracing digital solutions is imperative for businesses to thrive and expand. The healthcare sector, in particular, has witnessed significant advancements by adopting digital tools and technologies. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing cancer treatment and enhancing patient care.
Telehealth has emerged as a vital component in modern medical practices, offering numerous benefits for healthcare providers and patients. The COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the importance of telehealth, making it a cornerstone in delivering quality healthcare services.
The evolution towards telemedicine features has been swift and seamless, facilitated by rapid technological advancements. Telemedicine applications have become integral to everyday life, transforming how healthcare services are accessed and delivered.
What is Telemedicine?
Telemedicine simplifies healthcare access by enabling patients to consult with healthcare providers remotely, akin to a video call with a friend. These applications offer convenience for non-urgent consultations that do not necessitate an in-person examination.
Utilizing telemedicine apps is straightforward; users can easily download the app, log in to the doctor’s portal, and schedule a consultation. This technology has revolutionized healthcare delivery by eliminating the need for patients to travel long distances for medical care.
Telehealth mobile apps encompass various features, catering to multiple healthcare needs and ensuring a seamless user experience for doctors and patients. These platforms streamline the delivery and receipt of care, making healthcare more accessible and convenient for all.
16 Key Telemedicine Software Features
We’ve defined the 16 essential features for telemedicine app development for hospitals and clinics to ensure that all the areas are covered and make the consultations a breeze. Developing an excellent app for telehealth benefits all the stakeholders and creates business opportunities for the hospital and practitioner
It’s essential to utilize all aspects of virtual care to the fullest and to understand what healthcare app features will help your practice the most. So, what is the best telehealth app for your practice? And what are the best telemedicine app features available? Let’s take a look at the must have16 telehealth features for providers.
If you want to start and test your idea of a telemedicine app without significant investments, beginning with an MVP (minimum viable product) is a great approach. This approach addresses common queries like the cost of a telemedicine app. This way, we create an app with some essential but must-have features.
1. Appointment Scheduling
In healthcare, times are crucial, and no patient wants to wait for intensive care. Hence, appointment scheduling is a must-have. Thus, as this feature, the telemedicine app allows patients to select available time slots for consultations with healthcare professionals. An intuitive interface helps things—an intuitive interface for patients to use the app.
Calendar integration with a scheduling feature keeps doctors updated and reminds patients of consultations to avoid missed appointments. This app integration feature shows the patient queue and filters patient profiling. It also enables the doctor to cancel an appointment anytime in an emergency and shows free slots for canceled appointments.
2. Patient Portal and Dashboard
telemedicine app must contain features like a patient portal and dashboard for a holistic view of overall patient information and allow doctors for timely intervention and decision-making
This feature highlights the basics and details and filters patients according to their medical issues. Using up-to-date information on the patient’s condition enables timely care delivery and shows the details like undergoing prescr. It also includes the patient’s history and treatment plans.
3. E-prescriptions
E-prescription is a feature that can be skipped, but this feature benefits pharmacies, patients, and prescribing doctors by speeding up healthcare service and making insurance claims easier. When combined with something like Amazon Comprehend Medical, it becomes easier for patients to understand a doctor’s hard-to-read writing.
Telemedicine software features like e-prescription are compliant with all regulatory bodies like
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- EPA (Electronic Prior Authorization)
- Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)
With an e-prescription feature, doctors can produce and send prescriptions without errors. This will help enhance communication and improve access to records on the medical insurance form, providing all information in electronically linked pharmacies.
4. Payment Gateway
One of the most frequent issues users face is related to payments, such as the unavailability of local payment options or security issues while processing payments. A functional payment gateway is essential in medical software features, which is a crucial question.
Any telemed gateway is needed as it has great benefits such as:
- System-generated invoice for every patient
- Automated appointment adherence
- Multiple payment methods
- Record of payments
- Secured payment compliance
- Safe payment processing
- Easy and fast user-friendly
- Integration with insurers
5. EHR Integration
Data is the backbone of efficient care delivery, and electronic health records provide the data promptly, integrating EHR/EMR in a telemedicine app. Integrating reliable and shows all the information on blood work, laboratory tests, and radiology, such as messages, prescriptions, and all the previous treatments received.
With the availability of all information needed, a doctor can understand and do what is required, ensuring that care is delivered correctly, consolidating the data, avoiding duplication or any missing information, and keeping the medical history up to date. An EHR for behavioral health or cancer patients is one of the best telemedicine software examples.
6. Wearables Support
Telemedicine applications that connect with wearable devices like fitness trackers or other monitoring tools are becoming essential. With time, more and more doctors and patients are showing reliability in these apps, and these apps have saved lives.
This integration provides real-time health data to doctors, aiding in remote patient monitoring and diagnostics. It makes all your data available in a few clicks from your smartwatch, enabling timely care delivery or updating daily statuses for patients with chronic conditions. Convenience is the future, and this feature is becoming a big thing.
7. Secure Video Conferencing
Telemedicine apps depend primarily on this feature and are necessary for every telemedicine platform. Telemedicine apps for providers cannot function without a quality and secure video conferencing feature because the patients connect with doctors using the video calling feature.
A telemedicine mobile app and computer software without good video streaming will ruin the patient experience and could disrupt the diagnosis process. The video must not be compromised regardless of the device used and if the telemedicine system requires expensive or the latest electronic devices would not be well-received by users.
8. Real-time Chat
A real-time chat option is a good feature that allows you to send messages within the app. It’s good for non-urgent things, like asking follow-up questions, giving updates, or talking about non-emergency stuff. It’s an extra way to communicate in addition to video calls.
9. Group Chats and Calls
In addition to one-on-one communication, the app supports group chats and calls. This means multiple users can join a single discussion, enhancing the collaborative nature of healthcare. For instance, family members can participate in consultations, ensuring everyone is informed about the patient’s condition and care plan.
Additionally, this feature is invaluable for medical teams where various specialists need to discuss a patient’s case collectively. Facilitating real-time, multi-user interactions makes communicating effectively and making informed decisions more straightforward for all involved parties.
10. Built-in Chatbot
Chatbots are welcomed and used in the healthcare industry as they minimize repetitive tasks. They ease the burden of repetitive tasks with their 24/7 availability, such as responding to common healthcare queries. They help users find quick information and help reduce the need for immediate intervention.
If you build a custom telemedicine app for doctors to make it innovative, you may add an AI-powered chatbot. Leveraging AI, it automates routine tasks like appointment scheduling, medication reminders, and answering common medical queries. A mobile telehealth app for patients that offers round-the-clock assistance can ensure high patient satisfaction.
11. HIPAA Compliance
If you’re working on telemedicine app development, it must be HIPAA-compliant and make it legal, and acceptable to the healthcare industry and patients.
If you’re using an off-the-shelf solution, read reviews and find a reputable app, no matter how good the telehealth is. No app looks like it has telehealth features, and it likely doesn’t meet the compliance criteria, such as multi-platform compatibility.
The end users in the healthcare industry are more diverse than any other industry as a provider.
Maybe you’re looking for a telehealth app for computers, but your patients all want to communicate via smartphone or tablet.
If you are looking for a pre-made telemedicine application, you must find one that works across platforms and devices to provide smooth patient communication. Accommodate patients where they are to make it simple for them.
12. Multi-platform Compatibility
Billions of mobile devices worldwide are being used in various capacities. This means there are billions of accessible devices for a telemedicine application. A competitive telemedicine app will be available across all major platforms, functioning seamlessly on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs.
Multiplatform compatibility ensures every user benefits from telemedicine regardless of device. People using iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS can access the telemedicine application wherever they are most comfortable. It could be in their homes, at work, on the train, or anywhere with an internet connection. Just don’t use your phone while driving, please!
13. User-friendly Interface
Doctors, patients, and prescription fulfillment services are sometimes the end users of a monitoring and telemedicine system. Since all stakeholders are crucial, creating a smooth user experience and interface is necessary.
Suppose a doctor is having a hard time using the custom telemedicine app. In that case, they are likely to change the platform. Similarly, if a patient is facing difficulty, leaving the cuff customer dissatisfied, the customer will be disappointed and notary.
Multilingual support in telemedicine apps is a crucial feature that significantly enhances accessibility and inclusivity for patients worldwide. By offering consultations, medical forms, and user interfaces in multiple languages, these apps ensure that language barriers do not hurt the delivery of quality healthcare.
This feature is especially beneficial in diverse communities and regions with multilingual populations, enabling patients to communicate symptoms, understand medical advice, and follow treatment plans accurately in their preferred language.
14. Multilingual Support
At least two billion people can use a telemedicine application that supports English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin, and Japanese. With globalization in full force, a globalized healthcare approach has become commonplace, even affecting telemedicine applications.
Custom telemedicine apps with multilingual support offer several benefits, including:
- Catering to diverse patients, even those who don’t speak English.
- Removes any language barriers for clear communication and significantly improves patient health outcomes.
- Equal healthcare access to diverse populations globally.
15. Telehealth Support for Mental Health
Many telehealth applications are in the market, and some mobile applications are designed to include appointments with general physicians and any specific type of consultation. Many applications for mental health support are also available.
Adding mental health support to a health app adds value, as many patients need support but can’t identify the need. This helps provide support to a broader user base on one platform.
16. Interoperability
This is one of the most essential features of telemedicine apps or any telehealth software. With the growth of telemedicine and remote medical services, the need for interoperability is a given, as exchanging data seamlessly isn’t a choice. Exchangingrms must be able to exchange data with multiple EHRs.
A custom telemedicine app can be incorporated into bIf a telemedicine app is interoperable, healthcare systems if it is interoperable. Exchanging data with practices can offer virtual consultations, access patients’ medical histories, and manage payment processing. To sum it up, interoperability is a must-have for meal organizations of all sizes.
Future of Telemedicine Apps
The world is going digital, as is the healthcare industry; several technologies are making significant progress in medicine, such as augmented reality, gadget integration, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. These technologies are being tested and developed to create a perfect patient solution and will soon be seen in telemedicine apps.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is undoubtedly the most significant innovation of the present era; using AI in telemedicine is an excellent way to help overworked doctors and medical staff by assisting them in tasks like medical transcription, analyzing medical imaging, predicting healthcare analyses based on history, and providing custom treatment plans, keeping all the data in view in the decision-making process.
Moreover, AI helps patients with real-time monitoring and disease prevention by connecting with healthcare equipment. AI and Machine learning can be integrated into an app for doctors to analyze the patient’s history and develop preventive measures to avoid disease.
Augmented to Virtual Reality (VR)
Augmented or virtual reality is the solution for developing a living and wandelemedicine app. Doctors can use these gadgets to explain exercises to patients as they do in real-life therapy and create an ideal environment using these technologies.
It is convenient for patients and efficient for treatment. For specialists, the main advantages are that AR helps to visualize the patient’s anatomy, overlay medical images, and guide procedures.
Implementing technologies like AR will attract attention from users and the media, increasing visibility and potentially driving more downloads and users.
According to IT Craft research, 40% to 60% of patients want broader access to virtual care, and the regulatory environment is evolving in response. However, the adoption of AR in telemedicine also faces limitations like technical challenges, but this seems promising for a better future of care.
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
Patients with chronic conditions and recurring conditions need constant monitoring and must visit frequently for routine checkups. A telehealth app with remote patient monitoring should be scalable and integrated with wearable gadgets like sandwiches, bracelets, or glasses.
It can ease the process of self-monitoring. A telehealth mobile app can collect data about heart rate, walking distance, and exercises performed by patients and create visualized reports for patients and doctors.
Power Up Your Telehealth Experience with Folio3 Digital Health
Telemedicine app development is an excellent idea and growth opportunity for medical practices. More and more people prefer to simplify their lives using online services. Join the transformation wave and develop your telemedicine applications for healthcare with Folio3 Digital Health. Your telehealth solution will become a must-have app with a user-friendly interface and unique features.
Conclusion
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, telemedicine apps have become essential for delivering quality care to patients. By incorporating the 16 must-have features discussed in this blog, telemedicine app developers can create platforms offering a superior user experience for doctors and patients.
These features, from secure video conferencing and electronic prescriptions to remote patient monitoring and AI-powered symptom checkers, work together to create a comprehensive and efficient healthcare solution. By prioritizing these features, telemedicine apps can help bridge the gap between patients and healthcare providers, ensuring that quality care is accessible.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Develop a Telemedicine App?
Developing a telemedicine app involves planning, market research, defining features, UI/UX design, development (frontend and backend), testing, and deployment. Secure compliance with healthcare regulations also involves securing HIPAA.
Is Telemedicine Suitable for All Conditions?
No, telemedicine is suitable for many but not all conditions. It works well for consultations, follow-ups, and minor illnesses but may not be ideal for emergency or complex cases requiring physical examination.
How Can I Ensure My Privacy During a Telemedicine Appointment?
Ensure your telemedicine provider uses encrypted platforms, verify the provider’s privacy practices, and conduct appointments in a private, secure location.
What Is the Cost of Telemedicine App Development?
The telemedicine app development cost varies widely based on features, platform, and developer rates, ranging from $30,000 to $250,000.
What Hardware and Software Are Used for Telemedicine?
Hardware includes smartphones, tablets, or computers with cameras and microphones. The software comprises telemedicine platforms, video conferencing tools, and apps that comply with healthcare regulations.
About the Author
Ahmed Sufyan Samee
Ahmed Sufyan Samee is a seasoned digital marketer with 3+ years of experience. Specializing in SEO, he excels in optimizing online content and managing display campaigns. His expertise extends to YouTube SEO, enhancing brand visibility and engagement. Ahmed is known for his strategic approach, leveraging PPC and SEO to drive measurable results. Committed to staying ahead in the dynamic digital landscape.
