Custom Healthcare Software Development: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

From electronic medical records to pharmacy management, healthcare software solutions can streamline and improve various tasks. Creating such a solution requires careful planning and implementation. Leveraging our years of experience in the healthcare industry, we’ve created this guide to cover everything from benefits to key features and technical considerations for developing healthcare software.

The healthcare industry faces a number of challenges as many organizations struggle to manage patient data, improve workflow, and ensure compliance with ever-changing regulations. Additionally, excessive administrative tasks can take up 30-40% of healthcare providers’ time, leading to inefficiency and burnout. Additionally, the lack of integration between different services often leads to communication issues, delays in patient care, and even medical errors.

If left unchecked, these medical errors can have serious consequences and lead to an increase in the number of victims. According to one report, in the United States, medical errors cause approximately 98,000 deaths annually.

A Statista survey of global citizens about healthcare shortcomings in their countries found that 63% of respondents in Poland consider their healthcare system to be underfunded, followed by 52% in Italy, 41% in Canada, 38% in Germany, 38% in the UK and 33% in the US.

In such a situation, having a comprehensive healthcare software solution can be a game changer. By automating routine tasks, improving data accessibility and communication between departments, healthcare software not only alleviates these challenges, but also increases overall efficiency and patient satisfaction.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through the process of developing a custom healthcare software solution. We’ll cover everything from identifying key features and benefits to understanding important technical considerations and compliance requirements.

Whether you’re looking to improve existing processes or implement one of the most impressive healthcare software solutions from scratch, this guide will provide you with the information you need to succeed.

What’s Included in a Healthcare Software Solution?

Called a healthcare software development solution or medical software development solution, it integrates multiple functions into a single platform, enabling healthcare providers to manage patient care, administrative tasks, and financial operations more efficiently.

Your healthcare software development projects can integrate and include many different types of healthcare software modules into a single ecosystem, such as:

• Electronic health record (EHR), a centralized system for storing and managing patient medical records.
• Patient management systems for scheduling appointments, tracking patient progress, and managing communications.
• Billing modules for managing payments, insurance claims, and financial reporting.
• Telemedicine modules that facilitate remote consultations and virtual care.
• Pharmacy management modules for managing medication inventory, prescriptions, and patient safety.
• Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) to help healthcare providers make clinical decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations and alerts.
• Laboratory information systems (LIS) for managing laboratory operations, including test ordering, results reporting, and quality control.
• Radiology Information Systems (RIS) to manage radiology workflow, including planning, image storage, AI/ML-based image analysis, and reporting.
• Hospital Management Systems to optimize and manage various administrative, clinical, financial, and operational functions of the hospital.
• Drug Discovery Systems to support and improve the process of discovering and developing new drugs.
• Apart from this, there are other features and types of healthcare software that you should consider developing depending on the dynamics of your facility.

All companies in this industry should invest in custom healthcare software development services to create an ecosystem that is tailored to their needs. In the final section, you will discover several benefits to make your decision with confidence.

Why should you invest in healthcare software development?

Investing in custom healthcare software development allows you to have a product that improves patient care and other medical and pharmacy operations, which is ultimately the goal of every healthcare organization. But the question is: How can this be achieved?

Read on to discover the benefits of healthcare software development:

• Improved patient care through streamlined processes, reduced medical data entry errors, personalized care, better decision making, and an ecosystem that facilitates communication between patients and healthcare professionals for accurate diagnosis and care.
• Increased efficiency and cost savings by automating administrative tasks, improving healthcare workflow, and making data-driven decisions.
• Easy access to healthcare services for patients through a patient portal, allowing patients to view their medical records, schedule appointments with their preferred doctors, and track their diagnostic journey.
• Improve decision making and patient care with integrated healthcare software systems that provide valuable insights from vast amounts of aggregated data.
• Gain a competitive edge by providing seamless healthcare services with personalization and data transparency, making your services more relevant and reliable in terms of accuracy and diagnosis based on medical records.

Investing in a healthcare software development solution not only improves the quality of care and operational efficiency, but also enables healthcare organizations to create a better future for their growing facility.

Top Features Your Healthcare Software Should Have

The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid change due to technological advancements and evolving patient expectations. This has led to an increased demand for innovative healthcare software solutions with advanced features. Let’s take a look at the features you should implement in your healthcare software based on different accessibility needs:

• Patient Registration and Profile Management: Allows you to create and manage a patient profile, update personal information, and track medical history. This functionality is available to both patients and administrative staff.
• Appointment Scheduling: Allows patients to schedule appointments with doctors, while staff and providers can manage and organize schedules.
• View e-Prescription: After consulting with their doctor, patients can easily access their prescribed medications online, manage dosage information, and manage refills as directed.
• Medical History: Patients can add their medical history, such as allergy information and past diagnoses, before visiting their facility and access the most up-to-date medical information provided by their facility.
• Electronic Health Record Integration: Healthcare professionals can access and update patient records, which can also be accessed from other integrated platforms.
• Predictive Analytics: Healthcare providers and analysts can use predictive tools to predict patient outcomes and improve care strategies.
• Electronic Prescription Management: During a consultation, healthcare professionals can add an e-prescription based on a patient’s symptoms, which can then be transferred to the in-house pharmacy. Large hospital chains such as Apollo Hospitals in India, Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine in the US, and IHH Healthcare in Malaysia have highly integrated healthcare systems.
• AI-Powered Healthcare Chatbots: Providing 24/7 medical assistance for premium medical consultations, appointment scheduling and management, and more.
• Automated Alert System: This feature is used to receive timely notifications of critical events such as critical lab results, sudden deterioration in patient health, adverse drug reactions, patient falls, sepsis, and code blue, allowing healthcare professionals to respond immediately and prevent adverse outcomes.
• Quantitative Image Analysis: This feature allows healthcare professionals to evaluate image reports and improve diagnostic accuracy.
• Operating Room (OT) Management: ​​This feature, accessible to surgeons, OR staff, and administrative staff, helps organize OR scheduling, staff, and equipment to ensure smooth operations.
• Invoice Generator: Used by administrative staff and finance department to create and manage invoices and bills for patient services, provider services, etc.
• Insurance Reimbursement Fraud Detection: Helps healthcare and insurance organizations monitor patient transactions and data to detect and prevent fraudulent activities related to health insurance reimbursement. As a result, hospitals can avoid insurance claim denial rates and insurance companies can save money.
• Hospital Inventory Management: Typically used by administrative staff and supply chain managers to manage inventory, track supplies, and ensure the availability of necessary medical equipment.

Key Considerations for Effective Healthcare Software Development

Did you know that in the United States, nearly 30% of EMR implementations fail because clinicians struggle to navigate the product? Well, this problem isn’t unique to EMRs; it’s common across all types of healthcare software.

That’s why it’s important to review the checklist provided by our CTO when choosing a healthcare software product development approach:

• Focus on creating an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that meets the needs of healthcare providers and patients, increasing ease of use and adoption.
• Design the software to integrate seamlessly with existing healthcare systems and other third-party applications, ensuring data sharing and communication is seamless across platforms.
• Create a scalable architecture that can accommodate future growth, whether that means increasing user base, adding new features, or expanding into new markets.
• Ensure that the software can integrate with electronic health record (EHR) systems, allowing healthcare providers to access and update patient records efficiently.
• Include advanced data analytics tools that provide actionable insights, helping healthcare providers make informed decisions and improve patient outcomes.
• Consider the growing need for mobile accessibility, and opt for responsive design or custom mobile app development services that allow healthcare providers and patients to access information on the go. You can also opt for a hybrid solution such as PWA development to have a single codebase optimized for web and mobile access.
• Meet medical standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, HL7, DICOM, and ICD-10 to ensure the software can properly manage medical data and facilitate appropriate diagnosis and treatment.
• Conduct rigorous testing and validation processes to ensure the software is bug-free, meets performance expectations, and is ready for deployment in critical healthcare environments.
• Implement strict security measures, including secure encryption, authentication, and regular security audits to protect sensitive patient information.
• Plan for ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and support to meet changing regulatory requirements, technological advances, and user feedback.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Healthcare Software Development

While your development strategy may vary depending on the type of healthcare software you choose, you can follow a general healthcare software product development process to guide your project in the right direction:

Step 1: Determine Healthcare Software Goals and Requirements

First, decide what type of healthcare software you will be developing. Is it for patient management, electronic health records, telemedicine, or something else?

Involve healthcare professionals in your facility, as well as patients, administrators, and IT staff, to gather their feedback and determine the software requirements specific to your healthcare facility.

Depending on the region your healthcare organization is located in, determine the regulations and compliance standards that your software solution must meet, such as HIPAA, GDPR, HL7, and more.

Step 2: Gather Market Insights to Design a Better Product

Once you have determined the type of healthcare software you want to develop, it is essential to study similar existing solutions to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Conducting surveys and interviews with end users can also be a valuable way to understand your focus group’s needs and identify pain points.

Step 3: Create a detailed project implementation plan

Based on your market and user research, you can define the project scope, deliverables, and key milestones, as well as budget considerations and resource planning.

When determining your healthcare software development budget, be sure to also consider the technology stack and resource requirements, as well as the appropriate engagement model for the project.

For the technology stack, you may want to consider the following:

To choose an engagement model, you can essentially choose between one of two models:

A fixed-cost model – This is best suited if your healthcare software development project has clear, well-planned requirements with little or no planned changes.

A dedicated, flexible hiring model – Ideal if you want a software developer from an outsourcing company like Softkingo to work as a remote resource for your project with a variable scope, allowing for direct communication and dedicated support. This model is also known as hiring dedicated developers.

Step 4: Design the Healthcare Software

Hire UI/UX designers who are experts in healthcare software interface design and can suggest touchpoints to provide the best user experience.

They will also help in developing wireframes and prototypes to visualize the software interface and functionality, keeping in mind the scalability of the product.

Step 5: Put Healthcare Software into Development

Before embarking on healthcare software development, ensure that the development plan is strategically designed based on an agile methodology. Adopting an agile approach can bring significant benefits not only in accelerating the software development lifecycle but also in creating highly-performing and scalable solutions.

But do not confuse it with DevOps practice. Read our guide on Agile vs. DevOps to understand better.

Implement the front-end solution for healthcare software keeping in mind all the tips provided by the designer to make the interface intuitive and efficient for a better user experience.

Prefer server-side or back-end development services to ensure efficient data handling, strong security, and seamless integration with other systems.

Ensure that healthcare software integrates seamlessly with existing healthcare systems such as electronic health records, billing systems, and laboratory systems.

To avoid panic from the start, you can start developing your healthcare software with MVP development services so that you can build, test, and iterate on your solution as requirements change. This step-by-step approach not only provides ease of development, but also offers cost advantages.

Step 6: Protect Your Healthcare Software

Implement data encryption at rest and in transit to protect patient information. Additionally, plan to incorporate role-based permissions as well as two-factor authentication to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive data.

Step 7: Conduct Rigorous Software Testing

Ensure that your healthcare software is thoroughly tested against all functional and non-functional requirements. This includes unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, performance testing, etc. to ensure that your solution is ready to deliver a seamless and secure user experience.

At Softkingo, we offer comprehensive software testing and quality assurance services using manual and automated QA practices to deliver robust software solutions to our clients.

Step 8: Deploy and Launch Your Healthcare Software

After performing all necessary software quality checks, proceed with deploying the software in a live environment, ensuring that all systems are properly configured and operational.

After implementation, have your software development team provide training to end users, including healthcare providers and administrative staff, to ensure smooth adoption.

Step 9: Gather Feedback and Iterate for Better Performance

After deployment, monitor the software for issues and provide ongoing support. Gather user feedback regularly to identify areas for improvement. Use this feedback to make necessary updates and improvements, ensuring that the software evolves with changing needs.

The healthcare industry is growing as people become more health-conscious. Let’s explore the top healthcare app development trends that will dominate in 2025.

Healthcare Software Development Challenges

Healthcare software development presents unique challenges due to the critical nature of the industry, regulatory compliance requirements, and the complexity of medical data. Here are some of the top challenges faced by business owners, users, and developers:

• Healthcare organizations must comply with stringent regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and local data privacy laws, making software compliance complex and time-consuming.
• Protecting sensitive patient data is critical and challenging, requiring business owners to invest in robust security measures to prevent data breaches and maintain patient trust.
• Integrating healthcare software with existing systems and electronic health records (EHRs) can be challenging due to the variety of standards and formats.
• Healthcare software development can be expensive and time-consuming, especially when it involves complex systems and stringent testing requirements.
• Users may have difficulty integrating new software into existing workflows and systems. Therefore, it is important to get help from IT staff.
• Additionally, healthcare data is often complex, unstructured, and subject to change. Therefore, it is important to hire software developers with experience in healthcare projects to develop a system that meets industry standards.

How much does it cost to develop healthcare software?

It can be estimated that the cost of developing healthcare software can range from $10,000 to $250,000 or more, depending on several factors, including the complexity of the application, the features required, and the expertise of the development team.

Depending on the complexity of the project, you can expect the following cost range:

• Basic healthcare applications: $10,000 to $30,000
• More complex applications, especially those with advanced features like telemedicine and artificial intelligence: $70,000 to $250,000 or more.

In addition, you can expect the cost to be distributed based on the software development services you choose:

There are also other factors that affect the cost of developing healthcare software, and the type of healthcare software also plays an important role.

For developing telemedicine software like Doctor on Demand, the cost can reach $200,000.

Remote patient monitoring software development solutions can range from $8,000 to $400,000 depending on the complexity. The reason behind this high cost estimate may be obvious: IoT and machine vision solutions will be required.

EHR software development costs can vary significantly depending on the specific requirements and integration requests.

So, consider all the factors mentioned here to better plan your budget.

Why Choose Softkingo for Healthcare Software Development Services?

Dealing with medical or healthcare software development is complex and requires careful consideration of several factors, as explained in this blog. Getting help from healthcare software development experts can be invaluable.

Softkingo is a healthcare software development company that is favored by many well-known companies in the health and wellness space, including EnneaApp (since 2011), Helponymous (now known as HeadHelp), and telemedicine platforms Waitless and Dentalcare.

These companies chose Softkingo as their technology partner over other healthcare software providers based on the following commitments:

• Extensive experience working on various healthcare software development projects
• Strategic compliance with industry standards and compliances such as HIPAA, GDPR, HL7, etc.
• DevOps engineers and Scrum Masters are there to manage and govern the projects
• Software developers are not only technical experts but also communication specialists with a customer-centric approach
• Strategic and transparent reporting system to keep you updated on the project progress
• 90% talent retention rate, ensuring that your project is managed by the same team with minimal handoffs

With such valuable offerings for healthcare solution providers, why miss out on the opportunity to collaborate with these people? Share your project requirements and our sales team will respond within 24-72 hours.

Healthcare Software Development FAQs

What are the latest trends in healthcare software development?

The latest trends include AI and machine learning for predictive analytics, telemedicine for remote care, interoperability for seamless data integration, blockchain for data security, wearable healthcare devices and the Internet of Things, cloud computing for scalability, patient-centric healthcare applications, advanced data analytics, voice and technology, regulatory compliance and cybersecurity, augmented and virtual reality, and personalized medicine.

How to choose the right healthcare software development company?

Choose a company with proven experience in healthcare projects, expertise in relevant technologies, a strong understanding of industry regulations, and a history of successful implementations. Consider your project management and customer service style, your ability to provide transparent reporting, and maintain a high talent retention rate.

What are the key considerations after implementing healthcare software?

Post-deployment considerations include monitoring software performance, providing ongoing support, gathering user feedback for improvements, ensuring regular updates, conducting regular security checks, and maintaining compliance with evolving regulations.

How long does it take to develop healthcare software?

On average, this can range from a few months to more than a year. Healthcare software development time can vary greatly depending on the complexity of the project, the features, and the experience of the development team.

How often should healthcare software be updated?

Healthcare software should be updated periodically to fix bugs, security vulnerabilities, and compliance changes. You can try to update your healthcare software every few months or as needed, based on user feedback and changing industry standards.