With many industries shifting their operations to online processes, the healthcare industry isn’t exceptional. Today, it is now easier than before to access healthcare services remotely through online platforms. In this case, healthcare service providers can now deliver services to their patients through online forums. This has streamlined operations, enhanced efficiency, and save on costs related to healthcare services.
As an entrepreneur, you can venture into a healthcare marketplace business and help the parties involved enjoy smooth operations while you earn a living from such a marketplace. However, what does it take to build a healthcare marketplace? What are the benefits of building such a platform? Keep reading to understand all the insights revolving around a healthcare marketplace.
What is a healthcare marketplace?
A healthcare marketplace is a platform that connects users (healthcare providers and patients) and enables them to complete their respective actions or processes.
It is a platform that handles a wide range of healthcare services and product delivery, including health insurance, hospital services, and drugs & medical devices, among many other tasks.
A healthcare marketplace, unlike other marketplaces that focus majorly on buying and selling, entails more. That is why building a healthcare marketplace is a complex process that needs effective planning and proper decision-making.
With this said, when building a healthcare marketplace, make sure you factor in the following key players in this field:
- Healthcare providers –this includes clinics, hospitals, and physicians. They play a major role in diagnosing health issues, caring for patients, and facilitating professional treatment processes. Without healthcare providers, the marketplace will not be meaningful.
- Pharmaceutical and medical products – this is made up of medical devices, vaccines, and drugs. The key task of pharmaceuticals is to develop life-saving products while generating good revenue at the same time.
- Health insurance –this is the financial warehousing of the healthcare marketplace. It is where the insurers manage all the insurance-related risks, ensuring that users can access the needed services promptly.
- Health information technology – this includes the EHR and health apps, ensuring reliable service delivery and ease of accessibility.
Benefits of a healthcare marketplace
A healthcare marketplace benefits both the service providers and those seeking healthcare services in diverse ways. Below are some of the top benefits of using a healthcare marketplace:
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Better transparency
The platform highlights all the services rendered, the processes, the quality of services, and the costs incurred. This transparency helps the platform users seeking services choose the options that meet their budget and healthcare needs. What’s more, there are no hidden expenses, as everything is displayed on the marketplace.
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Enhanced service delivery
The healthcare marketplace platform offers diverse services to meet the different needs of different patients. As a way of attracting more users, such a marketplace focuses on quality, cost-effectiveness, and streamlined service delivery. This ensures the customers are satisfied in the long run without exploiting them cost-wise.
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Enhanced patient experience
Through a healthcare marketplace, patients take charge of their preferred service provider in relation to the services they are searching for. This high level of personalization helps patients with chronic illnesses to get the required attention from the selected experts promptly, thus creating a positive patient experience.
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Better access to care
A healthcare marketplace offers diverse services. This makes it easy for users to access their needed healthcare service provider to attend to their needs. This helps even patients located in remote areas to get equal access to healthcare services, thus creating a healthy community for better living.
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Reduced costs
A healthcare marketplace offers many services to different users at the same time. This helps the service providers to create an efficient strategy and devise plans to cut costs. In the long run, patients enjoy specialized healthcare services in a streamlined manner at reduced costs.
Must-have features of a healthcare marketplace
For a healthcare marketplace to run smoothly and ensure proper service delivery, there must be several features that streamline the processes. These are features for healthcare service providers and features for patients. They include the following:
Features for healthcare service providers
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User profiles
The user profile has the details of the service provider, including the name, photo, location, education & certifications, and any other crucial information regarding individual healthcare providers. The profile should also have ratings and reviews of past engagements with other patients.
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Communication channels
In a healthcare marketplace, communication is crucial. Healthcare providers need to communicate with their patients through audio and video calls. This is especially important for appointment booking, drug prescription, and consultancy services, among other communication needs.
That is why it is essential to include a feature for messaging and calls to facilitate a streamlined communication process.
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Secure data access control and data security
Security and confidentiality have of great impact in the healthcare marketplace. Healthcare providers must ensure they follow the set security and privacy guidelines that secure the patient’s confidential data.
Patient’s personal details, such as clinical records, their data, and treatment plans, among others, require proper security against unauthorized access, cyberattacks, and related threats. That is why the team handling the process of building a healthcare marketplace should integrate role-based access control and data encryption features to secure all the data.
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Registration & authorization
Healthcare providers must have a streamlined process of registering and authorizing their access to the healthcare marketplace platform. That is why the registration and authorization feature is crucial in this. Once registered and authorized for their membership, they can then add and edit their personal details, including the services they offer, their schedules, payment processes, and communication channels.
It is key to include a solid verification process to ensure qualified and skilled healthcare providers join the marketplace to offer professional services. Details such as education background and baking details, in this case should be verified.
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Schedule management
Healthcare providers often handle many patients using the healthcare marketplace platform. In this case, it is essential for healthcare providers to plan their schedules by creating, editing, and viewing their available schedules for proper planning. This will help the teams plan their time well to avoid misunderstandings during service delivery.
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Admin panel
The admin panel or a comprehensive dashboard helps healthcare service providers manage all their activities using the platform is a clear manner. They need to review the patient’s data, plan for checkups, track payments, and manage appointments, among many other tasks.
Besides, the admin panel helps the marketplace owners to approve healthcare providers to join the platform once they review their details.
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Report management
Managing patient reports is also a key aspect of the healthcare marketplace. In this case, the development team should include a streamlined feature that will enable healthcare providers to manage patients’ reports, including clinical reports, patients’ data, and personal notes for personal planning.
The report management feature should also enable healthcare providers to review their past communication with specific patients for smooth service delivery.
Healthcare marketplace features for patients
Patients, too, must have access to specific features when using the healthcare marketplace for streamlined processes. These features include the following:
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Notifications
Notification feature is a key aspect of the healthcare marketplace. The feature helps the patients track their booking time any changes made, and sends reminders when they need to take drugs or visit their specialist.
The team building the healthcare marketplace can integrate the platform with third-party API and save on costs and time since they won’t build this feature from scratch.
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Registration and authorization
Patients, too, just like healthcare service providers, need to register and authorize their access to the healthcare marketplace platform. In this case, they need a registration & authorization feature to enhance convenience when using the platform.
To ensure you attract more users, include different methods patients can use when signing up. For instance, they can sign up through email, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, or Google. Most importantly, include the two-factor authentication feature to enhance the security of the platform and user data.
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Geolocation
A geolocation feature is crucial as it helps notify and update the user location and show the healthcare providers available in their region. This makes it easy for patients to book appointments with medical practitioners found around their area for streamlined services.
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Doctor search
For a smooth and personalized user experience, patients need the doctor search feature on the platform to ensure they find their healthcare provider easily. In this case, include filter and category options to enhance the overall user experience with the platform.
You can also include options to search for medical practitioners through medical procedures and symptoms to enhance user satisfaction.
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Online payments
Billing and processing payments are a crucial part of a healthcare marketplace. After the services have been rendered, the customers will need to make the required payments as agreed. That is why the healthcare marketplace development team must integrate different payment gateway systems to accommodate diverse users. Examples of common payment methods, in this case, include Braintree, PayPal, or Stripe.
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Appointment booking
Of course, patients will need to book and schedule their appointments to see their respective healthcare specialists. With this feature, the patients can easily review the doctor’s profiles, see their availability, and book the appropriate appointments through the marketplace.
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Reviews and ratings
A healthcare marketplace is a platform servicing many people at the same time. As a way of ensuring trust and reliability of the platform, include the reviews & rating feature, which allows customers to leave their honest reviews after getting the services from the platform. This helps other users to make insightful decisions when choosing the best healthcare provider for their needs.
Step by step on how to build a healthcare marketplace
Building a healthcare marketplace is a complex process that requires experts from a software development company like Aalpha Information Systems. However, with the steps outlined below, you can easily create a robust healthcare marketplace:
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Define the goals, objectives, and features
Start the process by defining what you want to achieve with the healthcare platform. This will lay the foundation for what you will follow in the next steps. Besides, with clear guidelines, you will build a platform that meets your vision and the user’s needs (patients, healthcare providers, and marketplace admin), ensuring you don’t waste time and resources.
Most importantly, highlight the core features and functionalities that will make the marketplace a viable idea. Finally, factor in the set industry regulations, guidelines, and standards to ensure every step you take aligns with the regulatory rules.
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Choose development platform
With the objectives and goals in place, you will need to find a reliable platform that will enable you to build the marketplace effortlessly.
Make sure you choose a platform that supports the features that streamline processes and functionalities of the platform. Make sure you prioritize the flexibility, tech skills required, ease of integration, and versatility of the platform.
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Design an intuitive UI
Create a user interface that users will find easy to navigate through the platform. Besides, it should have an appealing overview in relation to what the platform is offering, i.e., healthcare services. The brand overlook should reflect the healthcare services and offerings.
When building an intuitive UI, factor in the common tasks users perform when using the healthcare marketplace platform. For instance, accessing medical results, scheduling appointments, and searching for specific services on the platform.
Above all, ensure the design is highly responsive and that different users can access it through different devices.
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Integrate data management & Interoperability standards
Proper data management is what enhances the functionality and overall performance of a healthcare marketplace. Therefore, complete the following actions under this step:
Data storage and management configurations
- Putting in place secure data storage to safeguard patient data and ensure the information is easily accessible when needed.
- Choosing data storage methods that meet the set industry standards and guidelines
Service & API integrations
- Integrate the resourceful tools into the platform to enhance the functionality of the healthcare marketplace.
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Tasks automation
This helps streamline repetitive tasks to enhance the platform’s efficiency. For instance, reminding patients about their prescriptions, scheduling appointments & conformations, and processing follow-ups. Automating tasks saves time and streamlines the processes.
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Integrate security protocols and access controls
Solid security measures are of vital concern in the healthcare marketplace. Such a platform holds sensitive data for the patients, including medical history and treatment plans.
That is why the development team should include security measures to safeguard the platform’s data by performing the following actions:
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Activating security features by doing the following
- Integrating solid data protection techniques such as encryption to safeguard user data.
- Activating two-factor authentication for extra security
- Introducing role-based access control to limit users who can access and view some documents and files
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Enhancing regulatory compliance by doing the following:
- Monitoring user activity with the platform to record and retrieve the details when the need arises.
- Updating the set regulations to ensure the marketplace doesn’t go against the set healthcare rules and laws that could, in one way or the other, affect its operations.
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Testing, deployment, and improving the marketplace
With all the basic features and integration completed, you will need to test the performance and functionality of the system before deploying it. The process includes the following tasks:
- Thorough testing to verify that the system functions in relation to the goals and objectives set in step one. Make sure you check data security and overall usage of the platform.
- Check and verify the functionality of the system features and how they behave on different browsers and devices. Don’t forget to check data security measures in accordance with the set healthcare guidelines.
- Collect user feedback to modify the platform to enhance its service delivery and overall functionality using insights collected from real users.
Once the testing, verification and modification processes are over, you can now deploy or launch your marketplace.
After launching, keep checking the platform’s functionality and service delivery as you refine it to be the best. When doing refinement, focus on user feedback insights as you monitor common issues that might arise.
Strive to ensure the platform aligns with the needs of healthcare service providers, patients, and platform admins at large.
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Scale and optimize the marketplace
With time, your healthcare marketplace will attract a large number of users, hence the rapid growth. This means you will need to plan how to accommodate the growing traffic and user base.
Do this by:
Enhancing scalability to ensure the system can accommodate the growing user base under different scenarios. This is why you need to choose a healthcare marketplace development team whose tech stack prioritizes scalability for easy adjustments once the marketplace starts experiencing growth.
Adding new features that will meet the arising needs of the users. The new features can also align with the advancing technology and emerging trends in the healthcare sector.
Integrate the emerging innovative technologies to ensure the system stays on top and beats the tough competitive market.
The cost to build a healthcare marketplace
The cost of building a healthcare app or marketplace varies based on a number of reasons. Some of the factors impacting the cost of building a healthcare marketplace include the following:
- The system’s complexity
- Number of features required
- Integrations
- Regulatory & compliance fees
- Type of development team
- Tech stack used
- Support and maintenance costs
- Marketing and advertising
With these factors in mind, the cost of building a healthcare marketplace platform will range anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 or even more.
The secrete to reducing the costs of developing such a platform is prioritizing features, building a scalable platform, and outsourcing the development team, among other tips.
Conclusion
Building a healthcare marketplace is one of the best business ventures anyone with a clear vision and business objectives can opt for. The benefits are many, including streamlining operations, saving time & costs, enhancing efficiency, and enhancing transparency, among others.
While challenges such as data security, the complexity of using the platform, competition, payment issues, poor user retention rates, and limited scalability, among many others, will always arise, there are always solutions for each challenge. The core concept is to plan well, organize the healthcare marketplace development process well, integrate secure payment methods, and, most importantly, choose an experienced and skilled development team to handle the processes.
On matters of generating revenue, there are many monetization strategies for your healthcare marketplace, including content monetization, subscription plans, freemium model, in-app purchases, and in-app advertising, among many other methods.
Back to You!
Want to develop healthcare marketplace according to your needs? Connect with our healthcare software development company – Aalpha information systems and get a free consultation and quotation.
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Written by:
Pawan Pawar