How to Develop a Pharma App in 2022: Features and Compliances

Introduction

Market Overview

Types of Pharma Apps

Regulations to Follow During Pharma App Development

How to Develop a Pharma App: Features and Technologies

Final Verdict

FAQ’s

Introduction

How to make a pharmaceutical app? There are several points to consider like must-have features and regulations to comply with. In this guide, you can find all the required information to start the web app development process.

Pharma app development helps solve customers’ problems, so it’s a good startup idea or an opportunity to gain new customers. Pharmaceutical apps allow users to order and receive the required medicine whiteout going to the pharmacy. As for the existing pharmacies, such solutions help gain new customers.

However, developing a pharmaceutical application may be hard and time-consuming. You can find the necessary data about pharmaceutical app development in this guide provided by TheWebAppMarket, like must-have features, tech stack, and compliance to follow. 

Market Overview

Let’s start with the ePharmacy market overview. Mobile phones have already altered the way we live and trade. Mobile phones provide an opportunity to order medicine on the go and pick them in the chosen pharmacy or even order an address delivery.

The latest survey shows that 20% of pharma app users are more satisfied than customers who don’t use applications. In addition, pharma apps are beneficial for older people and people with medical conditions. 

The global pharmacy online market was approximately $50 billion in 2018, and it’s predicted to grow more than $177 billion by 2026. 

Types of Pharma Apps

Developing a pharma app, you need to choose the app type. It’s common to single out three types:

• Apps for pharmacy marketplaces. These apps, as the name suggests, feature a marketplace business logic. Customers can order drugs from nearby pharmacies. 
• Apps for pharmacy online stores. If you already have a medical company and want to communicate with customers directly, you may create a mobile app that allows clients to buy medications.
• Apps for pharmacy store chains. For existing pharmacy chains, it’s profitable to make a pharmaceutical app. As a result, you can increase sales and gain customers’ trust and loyalty.

Regulations to Follow During Pharma App Development 

Pharmaceutical apps have to follow a bunch of regulations. Simply saying, you should comply with all the rules common for healthcare app development. 

Since pharma apps collect customers’ personal data (address, banking data, medical prescriptions, and others), you should consider compliance with various regulations. 

• HIPAA. Applications created for the US market that process, record, and store Protected healthcare Information should follow HIPAA.
• CCPA. One more data regulation rule for the US market. According to CCPA, the company has to inform the customers about what information is collected.
• GDPR is a European analog to CCPA and is obligatory to follow for any company that collects and processes users’ data. 
• NIST. This regulation has standards, tools, and technologies to protect customers’ health information in the United States.
• HiTECH expands the HIPAA requirements, covering the medical records. For example, according to this act, it’s required to notify users about any data violations related to their health profile.
• PIPEDA protects the personal data of Canadian residents. These regulations are similar to GDPR.

How to Develop a Pharma App: Features and Technologies

To deliver the best user experience, it’s required to develop an ecosystem. A pharma solution needs to have four parts — customer app (iOS and Android), courier app (iOS and Android), pharmacist app (web), and admin panel (web). 

• Customer app for the user to order medicine, upload doctor’s prescription for the pharmacist, and track the order status. 
• The courier app shows the orders and order details (address, customer’s phone number, and more).
• The pharmacist app allows managing and collecting orders for couriers.
• Admin panel helps the pharmacy owner manage the whole ecosystem.

Of course, each solution requires various features. For an idea, this is a rough tech stack for creating a fitness app iOS is a mobile operating system.

Solution	Features to integrate
Customer app	Registration and login- search- location tracking- order- payments- push notifications
Courier app	Registration and login- navigation- order details- payments
Pharmacist app	Order management- integration of warehouse systems of pharmacies
Admin panel	Registration and login- analytics- payment management

The pharma solution is a complicated ecosystem, so you should consider a scalable tech stack. Developers need to use at least three programming languages for iOS, Android, and web development. 

To develop a pharma app, you need to cooperate with a qualified web app development team. They help you pick the appropriate technologies based on your requirements and business goals. 

There is required team members for pharma app development: 

• Front-end developer
• Back-end developer
• iOS developer
• Android developer
• UI/UX designer
• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• QA engineer

There are approximate technologies to make a pharma app, To give you an idea, this is a rough tech stack for creating a fitness app:

iOS

Swift is a programming language.

Alamofire Networking

Android

Kotlin is a programming language.

OkHttp 3 is a networking protocol.

Front-end

Swift is a programming language.

Frameworks: Angular, React

Back-end

Programming language: Node.js

Framework: Express 4

Database: MySQL

API: Swagger

Tools

Signup: Amazon SES, Amazon SNS

Payment: Braintree, Stripe

Search: Elastic Search

Navigation: Google Maps, Location Frameworks

Push notifications: FCM

Storage: Amazon S3

Web app development tends to be time-consuming since it’s a complicated solution with various user roles. It’s better to cooperate with a qualified and experienced development team. It allows creating successful solutions that can boost your business.

Final Verdict

If you run a drugstore, you must understand how to reach out to more customers to increase revenue. Of course, it’s not simple because there are so many rivals in the industry, especially as drugstores expand due to growth in pharmaceutical and prescription services. 

As part of this, you may leverage sophisticated tools for on-demand Pharmacy Mobile App Development. Pharma app development helps solve customers’ problems, so it’s a good startup idea that will allow users to order and receive the required medicine without going to the pharmacy. This article gives insight on the necessary tips required to develop a pharmaceutical app starting from the marketing perspective to the app development. We got it all!