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Python
.NET
React
Flutter
AWS
Microsoft AzureChallenges in healthcare software
- Front-desk teams overloaded with phone calls for bookings, refills and results
- Patient data spread across an EHR, billing system, spreadsheets and email
- Strict privacy rules that make off-the-shelf tools risky
- Clinicians losing time to duplicate data entry and documentation
- Legacy systems with limited or expensive integration options
Software we build for healthcare
Patient portals
Appointments, forms, results, messaging and payments in one secure place.
Telehealth
Video visits, virtual waiting rooms, e-prescribing integrations and visit notes.
Scheduling & intake
Online booking, digital intake forms, insurance capture and reminders.
Clinic operations
Staff scheduling, inventory, referrals and reporting dashboards.
Remote patient monitoring
Device data from wearables and home monitors, with alerts for care teams.
AI documentation helpers
Summaries and drafting tools with clinician review, built on HIPAA-eligible services.
Compliance and security
| Requirement | What it means for your software |
|---|---|
| HIPAA (Privacy & Security Rules) | Access controls, audit logs, encryption, BAAs with vendors handling PHI |
| HITECH breach notification | Logging and monitoring to detect and investigate incidents |
| 21st Century Cures Act / information blocking | Patients get timely electronic access to their data |
| Accessibility (ADA / Section 1557) | Patient-facing apps usable by people with disabilities (WCAG 2.2 AA) |
We are engineers, not lawyers. We build the technical controls these rules require and work with your compliance and legal advisers.
Systems we integrate with
A typical healthcare project
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Discovery2–3 weeks
Workflows, PHI data flows, EHR integration options and compliance requirements documented.
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Design2–4 weeks
Patient and staff journeys prototyped and tested for clarity and accessibility.
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Build3–6 months
Sprints with security reviews, audit logging and test data — never real patient data in development.
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Launch2–4 weeks
Pilot with one location, training, then phased rollout.
A patient journey, connected
Consider a patient booking a follow-up visit. In a disconnected practice, they phone during office hours, wait on hold, give their details again, receive a paper form at the front desk and later call to ask about test results. Each step costs staff time and frustrates the patient.
In a connected setup, the patient books online at any hour, choosing from real availability pulled from the practice management system. They receive a reminder by text with a link to complete intake forms on their phone; their answers flow into the EHR before the visit. After the appointment, results and visit summaries appear in the patient portal, with secure messaging for follow-up questions, and the balance can be paid online. Front-desk calls fall, no-shows drop with reminders, and clinicians start each visit with the information they need.
Questions to ask any healthcare software vendor
- Will you sign a Business Associate Agreement?
- Which cloud services will store PHI, and are they covered by BAAs?
- How do you control and log access to patient data?
- How is data encrypted in transit and at rest?
- What is your process for handling a security incident?
- How will the system integrate with our EHR, and who maintains that integration?
- Is the patient-facing interface accessible to people with disabilities?
A reference architecture for healthcare apps
Most healthcare products we build share the same shape, whether they are a patient portal, a care-coordination tool or a remote monitoring service. Keeping protected health information (PHI) in a small number of well-controlled places makes everything else — audits, breach investigation, vendor reviews — far simpler.
| Layer | What it does | Typical choices |
|---|---|---|
| Patient & clinician apps | Web and mobile interfaces; no PHI cached longer than needed on devices | React / Next.js, Flutter, native iOS and Android |
| API & identity | Authentication, role-based access, consent checks, audit logging | OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect, SMART on FHIR for EHR launch |
| Clinical data service | Stores PHI with encryption, versioning and access logs | PostgreSQL or a managed FHIR store (e.g. AWS HealthLake, Azure Health Data Services, Google Cloud Healthcare API) |
| Integration engine | Translates HL7 v2, FHIR, CCD/C-CDA and flat files between systems | Managed interface engines or custom services |
| Analytics | De-identified or limited data sets for reporting | Separate warehouse with stricter access than the operational store |
Cloud services listed are HIPAA-eligible only when covered by the provider’s Business Associate Agreement and configured correctly.
The separation between operational data and analytics matters: reporting users rarely need names and dates of birth, so removing direct identifiers before data reaches dashboards shrinks the number of people and systems that touch PHI.
FHIR, HL7 and the reality of EHR integration
Modern EHRs expose FHIR R4 APIs, and US certification rules require standardised patient-access and app-launch APIs. In practice, what you can read and write depends on the EHR vendor, the specific organisation’s configuration and the app approval process. Read access to demographics, appointments, medications, allergies and results is widely available; writing data back — orders, notes, scheduling — is more restricted and often needs vendor programme membership or organisation-specific agreements.
Many hospitals still run HL7 v2 feeds for admissions, orders and results alongside FHIR. A realistic integration plan covers both, plus the operational details that cause delays: test environments, credential provisioning, the customer’s IT security review and the change window for go-live. We plan these from week one rather than discovering them at the end.
Build, buy or extend?
| Need | Usually buy or extend | Worth building custom |
|---|---|---|
| Core EHR / practice management | Established certified EHR products | Rarely — certification and liability make this a product business |
| Patient engagement | EHR-native portal for basic access | Branded experiences, multi-location booking, specialty workflows |
| Telehealth video | HIPAA-eligible video APIs and platforms | The visit workflow, intake and follow-up around the video |
| Remote monitoring | Device vendor platforms | Clinician dashboards, alert rules and billing documentation support |
| Analytics | BI tools on a governed warehouse | Specialty quality measures and operational dashboards |
The pattern we recommend most often is to keep the EHR as the system of record and build focused tools around it. See telemedicine app development for the most common example.
Turning HIPAA into engineering tasks
The HIPAA Security Rule describes safeguards rather than specific technologies, so each organisation decides how to meet them based on its risk analysis. In software projects, those decisions usually translate into a concrete backlog:
- Unique user accounts, multi-factor authentication for staff and automatic session timeouts
- Role-based access so staff see only the records their job requires
- Tamper-evident audit logs of who viewed or changed which record, retained per your policy
- Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, with keys managed in the cloud provider’s key service
- Business Associate Agreements with every vendor that stores or processes PHI — hosting, email, SMS, analytics, support tools
- No PHI in push notification text, URLs, analytics events or application logs
- Backups, tested restores and a documented incident-response process
Common mistakes in healthcare software projects
- Adding marketing analytics or session-recording scripts to authenticated pages, sending PHI to vendors without a BAA
- Assuming EHR write access will be available, then discovering it requires a long approval process
- Designing for clinicians without observing their real workflow — adding clicks to an already overloaded day
- Treating accessibility as optional for patient-facing apps used by older and disabled patients
- Leaving the risk analysis until just before launch instead of using it to shape the design
Designing for clinicians and patients
Healthcare software has two very different audiences. Clinicians work under time pressure, often switching between the EHR and several other tools, so every extra click or login is noticed. Patients range from tech-confident parents to older adults using a phone with large text settings. Good design serves both without compromise.
- For clinicians: launch from inside the EHR where possible, pre-fill from existing records, keep critical information above the fold and support keyboard-heavy workflows.
- For patients: plain-language wording, large tap targets, support for screen readers and text resizing, and clear next steps after every action.
- For both: fast load times on poor connections and predictable behaviour when sessions time out.
We validate designs with real users before development using our UX research process, which costs far less than redesigning after launch.
Typical healthcare project budgets
| Project | Typical timeline | Typical budget (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Patient intake & scheduling app | 8–14 weeks | $40k – $90k |
| Patient portal with EHR read integration | 3–6 months | $80k – $200k |
| Remote monitoring platform with clinician dashboard | 4–8 months | $120k – $300k |
Typical ranges to help you plan. Your written estimate follows a free discovery call.
Healthcare metrics software should surface
Healthcare organisations already measure a great deal, but the numbers often live in separate reports pulled by hand from the EHR, the billing system and spreadsheets. Software earns its keep when it puts the right measures in front of the right people at the moment they can act on them.
| Area | Measures teams commonly track | How software helps |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Days to third-next-available appointment, no-show rate, referral leakage | Self-scheduling, reminders, waitlist backfill and referral tracking |
| Operations | Room utilisation, check-in time, staff overtime | Real-time dashboards fed by scheduling and check-in events |
| Revenue cycle | Clean-claim rate, days in A/R, denial reasons | Eligibility checks before the visit and denial analytics by payer |
| Patient experience | Portal adoption, message response time, survey scores | Unified inbox, routing rules and response-time alerts |
Illustrative metrics; which ones matter depends on your organisation and goals.
We build these views on top of an audited data layer so every figure can be traced back to its source records — essential when clinical or financial decisions depend on it.
Services for this industry
Most healthcare projects combine custom software development, mobile app development and secure cloud hosting. Building a virtual-care product? See telemedicine app development.
Explore more in Industry Software Development for the Sectors We Serve.