Medical Web Application Development Guide: Processes, Tech Factors, and Design Essentials

Gone are the days when we used to enquire about different services and get information from the people around us; today, we simply use our smartphones and laptops to connect to the internet and find what we are looking for. This behavior has not only affected user behavior and preferences, but has also changed the way industries function – even the healthcare industry. Now, more and more people are looking for healthcare services and trying to find the best ones around them via the Internet. This is why a lot of hospitals and healthcare providers have been investing in medical website development and we recommend you do too!

But, before you fall into a spiral while trying to figure out how to get started and what the entire process entails, we recommend you pause and read the article we have compiled below. Here, we will dive into medical website design and development and will also discuss the different costs associated and the design elements that you must keep in mind. Let us jump right into the article and start discussing how you must approach developing your medical website to ensure timely success!

Why Do You Need To Invest in Medical Website Development and Focus on Having an Updated Website?

Websites are a great investment for businesses who want to reach their target customers and want to provide users with a platform that allows them to easily get in touch with the business’s representatives; as for healthcare providers and hospitals, an updated website can help build an online presence and will also allow the business to grow in no time.

Some other advantages that you can experience when you invest in healthcare web development include:-

1. Better Accessibility

Before businesses started investing in dedicated websites, they set up chat and customer support teams to cater to user needs, complaints, and queries; but, there were numerous problems like – huge phone queues causing a lot of users to drop off calls, increased employee workload, and difficulty in handling traffic during high demand times. If you are experiencing any of these issues, we recommend you invest in responsive web design services to get a website at the earliest!

2. Seamless Marketing Opportunities

When you invest in medical website development, you can ensure that customers looking for healthcare services can easily find your website; and, this is a great online marketing channel that can lead to more marketing opportunities and greater customer traffic. Other than partnering with a professional healthcare software development company to ensure your website is seamless and functional, we recommend you invest in SEO and digital marketing services to see better results!

3. Provides Relevant Hospital Information at One Place

Before today’s internet era, patients had to call relevant hospital departments to get detailed information, which was time-consuming and a bit complicated. When you have a dedicated medical website, you ensure that all relevant information about your hospital and clinic is available online and at one place; so, customers can simply go to your website and learn about things like – your hospital’s contact information, details of healthcare professionals available along with their OPD time slots, and your hospital’s credentials and licenses.

Although these are the top three reasons that motivate businesses to invest in medical web development, there are a lot of other benefits that you can easily experience; also, as digitization is gaining more popularity and people are gearing up and warming up to the idea of technology influencing different aspects of life, you absolutely cannot afford to fall back and must jump on this wagon!

What Are The Different Types of Medical Websites and How Do Businesses Generally Use Them?

As someone in the healthcare industry, you surely know that hospitals and clinics need to manage healthcare information and medical history of hundreds (if not thousands) of clients; when you invest in medical website development, you get access to a well-managed platform that allows you to create electronic records of customer information and ensure better maintenance.

However, every business has a different purpose when partnering with a medical web design company to design and build their website. Hence, there are numerous types of healthcare websites that are flooding the industry and creating remarkable impact. However, the two most popular and commonly-built medical website types are:-

• EHR/EMR Systems: Electronic health record and electronic medical record systems are developed to keep track of patient’s medical records and ensure better maintenance. If you are tired of having to manually maintain the information of thousands of patients, we recommend you invest in EHR software development.

• Telemedicine Systems: These platforms allow users to book online consultations with doctors and have features that enable in-app prescription creation and medical history maintenance.

In the previous section where we discussed why you must invest in medical website development, we mainly talked about accessibility and availability of better marketing opportunities. But, we think it would be better if we learnt more about why businesses specifically hire web developers and focus on website creation. So, we have compiled this list of the top uses of medical websites that you can also realize to experience more benefits.

1. Seamless Communication Between Patients and Healthcare Providers

A medical website is so much more than an online portal that provides patients with the hospital’s contact information; other than acting as a platform where users can book teleconsultations, these portals can be modified to allow patients to chat and video call their doctors, allowing customers to get instant medical advice at their convenience. Ultimately, this not only aids in ensuring better user experiences, but also allows healthcare providers to better monitor patient conditions.

2. Business and Feature Automation

Generally, a lot of businesses hire medical website developers to automate different business tasks such as – customer support using chatbots, user review collection using online forms, etc. After all, technology, when programmed properly, can be more efficient than humans and can also help save a lot of time. Another great benefit that you can experience due to this is that it can simplify a lot of administrative tasks which help free up your team and allow them to focus on other crucial business tasks.

3. Access to Educational Resources

To ensure that your medical website is as beneficial to patients as healthcare providers, we recommend you post medical information and blogs on different treatment plans; ultimately, this will ensure that your platform offers users a great load of information and also helps build brand trust and reliability.

What Important Factors Should You Consider Before Investing in Medical Website Development?

Although it is easy for businesses to simply hire a medical website developer and hand over all website responsibilities, things can quickly go downhill if you do not have a proper plan or strategy in place. So, we have listed the most important factors that you must consider before getting in touch with a company and investing in medical website development.

1. Compliance with HIPAA and HITECH Policies

Since an individual’s medical information and history is private, you must ensure that your app keeps this data secure and protected from cyber attacks; and, this is also an important part of health services and HIPAA regulations which focuses on protecting sensitive information like insurance details and credit card information. We recommend you focus on creating a medical device website design that complies to both HIPAA and HITECH policies; this will help ensure that you protect your users and will also ensure that there are no chances of data breach.

2. Detailed Privacy Policies

As we discussed, medical websites deal with a lot of sensitive and confidential information, which is why you must ensure that your app has detailed privacy policies in place. Another tip for you – make your detailed privacy policies available to your users to ensure they have an idea about how their data is collected and processed and can consent to it.

3. Get an SSL Certificate

We recommend you hire a healthcare web developer who knows the importance of HTTPS and SSL certificates; after all, your server must be secure and your website must have security protocols in place to ensure the website is reliable and not at risk of attacks.

4. Including Web Responsive Elements

Since more users today use and prefer smartphones over laptops and PCs, businesses must ensure that they focus on responsive medical website creation; after all, your website must look great not only on computers, but also on all screens and must cater to all users!

What Functionalities Should I Include in My Medical Website?

There are a lot of technologies that are taking the healthcare industry by storm like AI and ML, Big Data, and IoT; but, out of all the technologies available, you must invest in implementing IoT in Healthcare Industry features to stand out. Some other features that you must ensure including in your medical website include:-

1. Intuitive Search Functionalities: These help users ensure that they can quickly find the features and resources they have been looking for without checking out the numerous web pages and content available.
2. User-Friendly Website Navigation: When you have a great navigation in place, you ensure that your users can easily find what they have been looking for; after all, this ultimately helps add to the overall user experience and ensures better fulfillment of user needs.
3. Online Video Consultation: This feature helps implement teleconsultation and telemedicine, the two hottest trends in the healthcare industry; and, will also allow your users to book visits and consultations at their convenience.

What Technologies Can I Use For Developing My Medical Website?

With so many technologies available in the market, you might want to invest in medical website development and partner with a professional company; but, it would be better if you have an idea about the different technologies that you can use. We have listed the different technologies that are used by professional developers and that you must consider, in the table below:-

CMARIX’s Experience in Medical Website Development

As you can see, investing in medical web development can help bring a lot of benefits which is why a lot of businesses today invest in it. At CMARIX, we have helped numerous hospitals and healthcare clinics build their medical websites; from telecommunication systems to EHR systems, we have helped bring the dreams of numerous businesses into reality. We recommend you get in touch with us to have a chat with a professional medical web developer and understand how we can help you out!

Frequently Asked Questions