Ask HN: What are the unique technical challenges of a health-related mobile app?

1 point·giorgosera··3 comments

There is a spike of new medical/health mobile apps pushing for consumerization of the healthcare system.

As an outsider in the space and a mobile app developer I am wondering what are some unique challenges that these apps face!

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For almost a year, I have worked for a forward-thinking doctor who started funding the development of an app after he realized that many of his patients receiving chronic care management by phone could be better served. He also realized he could sell it as a turnkey service for other doctors without any remote care solutions of their own. So the advent of the pandemic saw a brief layoff period of two weeks, then a hiring spree that has remained more or less constant since then. The problem, however, is that the doctor tries to run this app company on his own - and he's still a doctor all day, too. So organizationally we're a wreck. We have no formal onboarding process, no formal training process, no clear rules on handling patients, and from what I can tell there are still no clear plans to develop any of those. So we've grown the number of clinics, doctors, and patients we serve, plus we've developed a glitchy but very useful app. But I think we'll be out of business within a year unless someone experienced in tech development can convince the doctor he has no idea what he's doing.

Oh boy! It sounds like you are in a challenging situation. I was more interested in technical challenges of health-related apps but I wish you all the best with this app!

Hi George, I'm joining you in this curiosity. Also a bunch of software developers here, interested in the same topic.

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