We are living in an era of digital transformation. All traditional services that we know of are going through a major shift. All services are rapidly turning digital. Healthcare is one of these major industries. This digital transformation of healthcare services aims at making everyone's lives easier by enabling those in need to procure medical services remotely.
To carry out this transformation, a healthcare organization can acquire custom website development services from a developer or a development company for the best results. This is a booming sector right now and has lots of scope. Let's see how healthcare has adopted this transformation.
Introduction to Healthcare Web Development
Previously, many professionals believed that digitizing healthcare services would not be reliable. They feared patients not getting the right treatment, especially patients whose lives were at risk. However, with time they realized that the system was reliable, and they could provide efficient treatment without traditional methods as well.
Additionally, it helps maintain every patient's records and makes analyzing their treatment and progress much easier for the doctors and medical staff. Healthcare web development is a very important process that is currently at its peak. Every traditional healthcare organization is investing in digitizing its services, and new start-ups have set up digital services as their primary objective.
Healthcare Web Development Benefits
Web development for healthcare is one of the most trending services today. There are a lot of benefits to creating a website or web app for providing these services.
Patients can communicate with the medical staff remotely and in real-time. This can help save time as patients don't have to travel to the hospital or the clinic. Also, people can get in touch with professionals for any small queries that they otherwise couldn't, using the traditional approach. This can also help avoid any missteps or wrong judgments of minor symptoms.
As the data, medical history, and profile of the patients are stored electronically, it becomes easier to analyze their progress. BI reports can help medical professionals to understand their health better and take proper calls on time.
This can also help create datasets for machine learning algorithms to generate analytics and reports based on the metrics to help doctors as well.
Healthcare organizations that have shifted their operations to a digital platform are able to hire remotely working employees as well. They can work from home as the platform is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.
When there is an online platform for all the services, the data and history of all patients are digitized. This makes it easier to maintain records and find all the details almost instantly when required. This will enhance the administration operations as well. The non-medical staff can handle all appointments and backend operations more smoothly and easily.
Giving daily reminder notifications to patients about their medicines and treatment can be incorporated into the platform as well. This adds to the advantages of healthcare web development. Consumers don't have to worry about setting reminders for their medication as that is handled automatically by the system.
The apps and websites can have an additional module about self-care tips that are pushed to the patients regularly. This would act as an optional benefit for the organizations that can create and manage this content.
An online portal or a platform can have integrated modules to conduct insurance claims and billing procedures at the click of a few buttons. This electronic integration saves a lot of hassle and time for both the staff and consumers.
These web platforms can also have separate training modules accessible to employees only. Creating training modules and documentation for each new role in the organization can save a lot of time that was spent on manually training the new employees. All new employees can navigate to this section and learn all the information. Another added advantage of this is that it would enable the employees to find any information in case they need a refresher.
Expenses for Developing a Medical Website
The expenses required to develop a medical website depend on a lot of factors. These factors can be the location, the services you need to incorporate on the website, and the approach you take to hire developers. To give you a broader estimate, the cost of developing a medical website can be anywhere between $5000 – almost $150000.
Let us see how the geographics affect the cost estimate of building a healthcare website:
- Australia: ~$120000
- The US: ~$150000
- Asia: ~$40,000 - $50,000
- The UK: ~$170000
- Europe: ~$80000 - $150000
As you can see, a US based web development company can cost you far more than a company based in Asia or Europe. There are plenty of companies providing website design & development services across the globe. If you do not want to handle the hassle of acquiring and managing a team, you can outsource it to a company based in another geographical location as well.
- That brings us to our next factor, cost estimate depending on the type of your team:
- In-house team: $120000 - $150000, with complete control on the project
- Outsourcing to an onshore, offshore, nearshore agency: $60000 - $150000, looks like the best fit.
- Hiring freelancers: $40000 - $50000, though you might face project management challenges.
The most important factor which determines the estimate of your expenses for developing a healthcare website is the services you want to offer. Here's what each service will roughly add to your estimate:
- Basic corporate website to create and manage user profiles: $4000
- Scheduling appointments with doctors: $20000
- Storing records electronically: $40000
- Medical diagnosis: $40000
- Networking: $70000
- Hospital management services: $80000
- Telemedicine: $100000
All these cost estimates are based upon the standard compensation of ~$40 per hour for the developers.
Latest Trends and Strategies for Healthcare Website Design
Healthcare website trends are gaining popularity day by day. Let's take a look at some of the most important trends you need to keep in mind while designing:
- Dynamic Visualization: Showing the results of treatment is a must.
- Accessibility: This is very important. You need to keep in mind the people with disabilities who want to access the application or website.
- Bright look: This seems to be a minor point. However, bright colors on a medical website can have a significant impact on user engagement and conversion.
- Navigation: Nobody likes to keep clicking on links to find what they need. People will usually drop out if they don't find anything useful within three clicks on the website. So keep it simple!
Choosing the best Healthcare Web Developer
You might be wondering how you can choose the best web development services for creating your website. It's best to analyze the budget you can invest for this project. Based on that, you can decide on the services you want to include on your website. The next step is to decide on which team you want to hire for your development needs. If you do not wish to take the overhead of hiring and managing your own team, you can trust VLink to provide you with the best website design & development services. We can provide tailor-made websites and web apps that will help you leverage the benefits of a healthcare website.
Conclusion
This digital transformation boom in the healthcare sector will be very beneficial for doctors and consumers alike. Features like 24*7 availability, seamless process handling, and instant progress analysis are a boon for patients. If you are in the healthcare industry, you must make sure your organization has an online platform with such services to make the best of technology!
