What is the best way to develop a doctor appointment booking app like ZocDoc and Practo?

In today’s fast-moving world, many industries are transforming via technology as they are more efficient than anything else. With the launching of applications like ZocDoc, the hospitality industry has received a lot of praise. The platforms can be seen revolutionizing the process of the ways patients interact with healthcare providers. They can be seen training the booking procedure by swiping their smartphone.

Have you thought about the investment and complexity that you can encounter while making an app that happens to change everything? Let know about the best ways of developing a doctor appointment booking app like Practo and ZocDoc.

What is a Doctor Appointment Booking App?

As per the name, the doctor appointment booking system or app is a digital product that can help patients book appointments with doctors and allow the medical practitioner to manage their schedule as per their availability.

Applications like ZocDoc and Practo are created to simplify the procedure of booking and finding medical appointments, making medical services more accessible and convenient for patients.

These apps can be hospital-specific as they are specially created for managing the schedule of the doctors involved or the individual connected with the public repository like Practo and Zocdoc, allowing them to reach out to the patients and have a significant digital presence.

How Does A Doctor Appointment App Like ZocDoc and Practo Work?

If you are looking forward to developing a doctor appointment booking application like Practo and Zocdoc, you must be curious about how the application works and its flow.

Here is the step-by-step procedure for the users who want to know about the app for booking their meeting with the doctor.

Profile set-up and user registration

To start with the application, any user, whether a doctor or patient, must make a profile and add the relevant details. If the user here refers to the patient, they should provide info about their major surgeries, previous treatment, ongoing medicines, allergies, etc.

If the user is a doctor, they can provide all the information about their achievement, surgeries performed, specialization, education, etc.

Perform advance search and also check out ratings and reviews

Finding the right doctor can be several searches away. That’s why a powerful app equipped with advanced search filters is essential.

It helps patients find doctors who meet their criteria, provide excellent patient experiences and effective treatment plans, and boast impressive ratings and reviews.

It is necessary to plan appointments

Once a patient has found the best doctor for their ailment, they may look at the doctor’s calendar to see what days and hours work best for them and when they can book a consultation.

Real-time appointment scheduling is usually possible with these kinds of apps, so there’s no chance of two different appointments conflicting. A notification is delivered to the physician’s app when a patient makes an appointment. The doctor will then have the option to approve or reject the request for an appointment.

As soon as the provider supports the request, the patient will receive a notification through their smartphone about their work.

Integration with the Scheduler for Private Appointments

Appointment scheduling apps like Practo and Zocdoc can interface with personal calendars. As soon as the appointment is confirmed, a reminder will be placed on the physicians’ and patients’ calendars so they will remember to attend the scheduled medical consultation.

consultations conducted through videoconferencing or telemedicine. Users of ZocDoc and Practo can participate in video consultations, also called telehealth consultations.

Patients can now discuss their minor health problems with their doctor virtually, eliminating the need to visit the office physically. Together, they can decide how best to handle their worries.

Formulation, Extension, and Monitoring of Prescriptions

Specific apps for doctor’s appointment scheduling let the user create digital prescriptions for patients following consultations, update them following follow-up sessions, and renew them as needed.

Patients will then have a history of their previous drugs, which they can consult if they need additional medication or seek a second opinion from a different doctor.

Give ratings and reviews

Once the online medical expert consultation is over, the medical app will ask patients to provide ratings and reviews. Patients can provide assessments and can rate the doctor to help out the patients they are finding useful and making decisions.

Payment Procedure

This is the final stage, where a patient needs to send the consultation fees to the doctor. The procedure can differ from app to app, as some applications will ask for the payment on booking while others will ask once the appointment is completed.

It is highly recommended to ask the patient to pay the consultation or booking fee to avoid issues.

Reasons to Build an App Like ZocDoc or Practo

Many benefits are linked with making a doctor appointment app, and the benefits vary as per the entity and business type, like individual and hospital product-based ventures.

Here are some of the reasons for building an app like Practo or ZocDoc:

Extensive network of medical practitioners

Doctor and telemedicine booking apps are said to have an extensive network of healthcare service providers and doctors. It also allows the patients to choose the right doctor of different expertise to know what would be the best for them as per their needs.

So, if you have requirements related to gynaecology, mental wellness, skin allergies, etc., these apps will allow you to connect to dedicated specialists.

Convenience

If your user is a doctor or patient, the appointment booking app will offer the proper convenience for both. These types of apps are more accessible to navigate, handle and user-friendly.

The user can schedule appointments with doctors, and the practitioner must approve the requests.

Easy access to all services related to healthcare

The app, known as the doctor appointment booking app, offers more accessible access to healthcare facilities, inclusive of ordering online medicine, online doctor consultation lab, lab tests at home, and knowing about medical or surgery centres, etc.

The app benefits the patients, particularly those living in underserved or remote areas. They can consult with the specials and are not required to travel physically to the location.

Great patient experience

The doctor appointment system concepts will allow you to streamline the booking procedure, and consulting a doctor will become much easier here.

The patient must look for a better doctor to meet all the requirements, check availability, contact for consultation and book an appointment. This usability will allow you to improve the patient’s experience in booking the meeting with the expert.

Enhanced patient engagement

The app allows the patients to explore the easiest way to conveniently book a doctor’s appointment and engage with the service provider. The patients can feel involved with the treatment process and decisions.

Effective time management

With the help of this app, the medical expert can set and check their schedule for the booked appointment. It will reduce their waiting period and minimize the chances of missing and overbooking assignments.

Minimal administrative workload

The healthcare app will automate appointment scheduling, cancellation procedures, and rescheduling, minimizing the administrative burdens and workloads for the healthcare. The hospital’s executive or reception staff stresses providing patient care and assistance with healthcare.

Real-time updates and availability

These applications are implemented to showcase doctors’ real-time availability to patients—for instance, the possible appointment time for the doctor, their status, etc.

7 Steps to Build a Doctor Appointment App

The custom and design development for any online doctor appointment app is never a small task. Here are the steps that will help you in building your doctor appointment app:

Keep your database for the experts ready:

Making any healthcare app is quite similar to making an on-demand doctor app.

1. Ensure that your doctor database is ready

When you stop to think about it, developing an app for healthcare is not all that different from developing an app for on-demand physicians.

From the user’s point of view, you offer a marketplace, and the medical professionals and the services they offer are the products you sell. Additionally, the user orders a product by scheduling a doctor’s appointment.

As such, the first thing you need to do is make sure you own the product. Do you have a list of physicians you may recommend to people who visit a specific clinic where you work? Is it going to be accessible to you through APIs?

2. Prototype

After you have chosen the data sources for your doctor-on-demand app, the next stage in the process should be to construct a prototype.

Every screen in the program needs to have a visual design created for it, and a clickthrough prototype should be used to confirm that it functions as intended.

Remember that the main driving force for UI/UX changes should be feedback from your medical team and test users. Make sure to include certified specialists in the process of checking the creation of the online medical consultation app from the standpoint of the providers.

3. Assess Schedule Management Tools Sold Commercially

If you are designing an app for scheduling doctor’s visits, most of your work will go into developing a scheduling engine. That is true if you build it from the bottom up.

Therefore, the better option is to select an off-the-shelf scheduling API like those provided by Acuity, Timekit, or OnSched. Using these or similar APIs can significantly expedite the creation of a custom mobile application. Remember that your choice will affect the user interface (UI).

The issue with scheduling software development kits (SDKs) and APIs is that there is little customization available for how calendars look.

4. Coding

You still have some unpleasant things to finish before accessing your appointment app. Regarding that part, we find it very intriguing, and we know how to make it one of the most engaging experiences you can have as well.

Our development team works in short iterations and meets frequently to ensure full transparency for you during the coding process. If you follow this, you’ll be able to easily monitor the project’s progress and make all the right choices when they’re needed.

We advise writing code for your doctor booking app simultaneously because you’ll need to build it for both the online and mobile versions. This will reduce the time you’ll need to rewrite code later.

As part of the process, your software development team will create APIs to connect the application with medical records and build the medical staff scheduling software. Cross-platform development tools like React Native or Flutter will help you get the most out of your money if you want to create an iOS and Android app for making doctor appointments.

5. HIPAA Requirements COMPLIANCE

Ensuring your app is built with a secure architecture that complies with HIPAA standards is essential as you develop a medical appointment scheduling app.

This is especially important for HIPAA-compliant video conferencing and texting. Some of the things you should bear in mind are as follows:

• Information about PHI is encrypted.

• SSL connections and logins

• cloud computing companies that provide HIPAA compliance services

• General Data Protection Regulation, HITECH Act, and additional regulations.

6. Evaluation

Extensive testing must come before developing booking software for medical professionals. The quality assurance process starts concurrently with the coding phase and ends following each development sprint iteration.

Conversely, the final testing will encompass the app’s functionality and include unit, security, and stress tests.

7. Maintenance

The launch of the app, which will allow users to book appointments with their doctors, is the next stage. But the process doesn’t end with publishing mobile apps to app stores and transferring the web dashboard to a “live” server—like one on the Amazon Internet Services (AWS) environment.

You will need to update it often to support new mobile operating system versions and enhance the app’s functionality while considering user feedback.

As you can see, developing and designing an online system for scheduling doctor’s appointments can be difficult. For this reason, before starting a project of this kind, it is advisable to consult experts.

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Doctor Appointment App like Zocdoc and Practo?

First, it’s impossible to get a precise price quote for creating an app to make doctor appointments. This is because of the influence of the various cost components that go into developing an app, such as the following:

The application’s complexity, the quantity of features and functions you wish to include;

• Specifications for UI/UX design, such as screen count and wow factor.

• What kind of group are you trying to put together? In-house, remote, freelancers, and so on are a few examples.

• Quantity of knowledgeable workers you have on staff;

• The duration of time that the group has spent working together;

• The source of the knowledgeable labourers;

• The stack of technologies that will be used in, etc.

Furthermore, the engagement model you choose will also affect the cost. Because of this, many IT experts advise choosing the dedicated recruiting model, which enables you to hire staff hourly.

Regarding the hourly hiring model, these costs can differ not just between countries but also within regions.

Conclusion

We really hope the above article will help you in knowing about how can you develop a doctor booking apps like practo and Zocdoc. You can reach out to one of the reputed companies to help you out with the development procedure.

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