Guide
What healthcare app development costs, for three apps a practice might build
$47,000 – $67,000 for a patient app for one practice, where patients book, pay their balance and get reminders, and staff work from a portal of their own. A web tool for the clinic’s staff comes to $38,000 – $55,000. Send the patient app’s bookings and payments to your staff’s EHR, with no portal at all, and it’s $34,000 – $49,000, as long as that EHR has a documented way for outside apps to connect.
- $47,000 – $67,000
- A patient app for one practice, with its own staff portal and HIPAA built in
- $34,000 – $49,000
- The same patient app, feeding your staff’s EHR
- $38,000 – $55,000
- A web tool for a clinic’s staff, tracking referrals and insurance approvals
Written by
WhatWillMyAppCost
We build the estimator this site runs on, and we design and build custom mobile and web software for a living. Every figure below is the estimator’s own output, except the published vendor prices, which are read off each company’s own page and dated.
You run a practice, or the business side of one. Patients call the front desk for everything, and you’d like them to book and pay on their phones. Or the front desk is buried in referrals, and the EHR doesn’t track them the way you need. Either way, you want to know what your app would cost.
Three healthcare builds for one practice, all with HIPAA designed in: a patient app with its own staff portal, the same app sending bookings and payments to your EHR, and a web tool for the clinic’s staff. For each one, what it costs and which piece moves the price most when it comes out on its own. Then what the estimator can’t price about your EHR, and whether you need a patient app at all when the EHR has a portal.
How much does it cost to build a healthcare app?
$34,000 to $67,000 across the three below. All three are for one practice with a few hundred patients.
A patient app, $47,000 – $67,000 over 15–22 weeks. Patients sign in on iPhone or Android, book or move an appointment, pay their balance by card and get a reminder the day before. The front desk works from a staff portal built for it.
The same patient app sending bookings and payments to your EHR, $34,000 – $49,000 over 13–20 weeks. Patients see the same screens. Staff never log into it, because bookings and payments land in the EHR they work in.
A staff tool, $38,000 – $55,000 over 14–20 weeks. It’s a web page where the front desk logs referrals as they arrive, clinicians see which insurance approvals have come through, and the practice manager gets a few reports.
Each one holds patients’ health information for a practice, so each is priced with HIPAA built in from the start. What HIPAA adds, and how to tell whether your app falls under it has a page of its own. Video visits and Bluetooth devices like blood pressure cuffs aren’t in any of the three.
What does a patient app for a medical practice cost?
$47,000 – $67,000, over 15–22 weeks, on iPhone and Android from one codebase. Take any one piece out and leave the rest, and the middle of that range drops by:
About $15,000 for the staff portal, where the front desk sees the day, moves bookings and checks who’s paid.
About $5,500 for paying a balance by card, with receipts and refunds.
About $4,000 for patients signing in, with password resets and closing an account.
About $4,000 for staff as a second kind of user, with permissions of their own.
About $2,000 for the reminder the day before.
The staff portal is the biggest piece by a long way. Paying by card is next, at $5,500, because refunds, failed cards and receipts come with it.
Your practice won’t match this exactly. Price the version you’d build. The box comes filled in with this app, and every sentence you change reprices it.
Is sending bookings to your EHR cheaper than a staff portal?
Yes, by about $15,500 at the middle of the range, if your EHR has a documented way for outside apps to connect. What the connection itself costs is set by your EHR, and the estimator can’t tell one EHR from another.
Most office-based physicians already work in one: ONC, the federal office for health IT, counts 95% as having adopted some kind of EHR in 2024.
- Staff work in a portal built for the app
- $47,000 – $67,000 over 15–22 weeks. Bookings and payments show up in the portal, and the front desk keeps the portal and the EHR open side by side.
- Bookings and payments go straight into the EHR
- $34,000 – $49,000 over 13–20 weeks. Staff never open the app, so the portal and their separate permissions come out, and one connection goes in, reading open times and balances from the EHR and writing bookings and payments back.
If your front desk already books visits and posts payments in your EHR, send the patient app’s bookings and payments there and skip the portal. That’s about $15,500 off the middle of the range, as long as the EHR has a documented way for outside apps to connect.
The estimator prices the link the way it prices any outside system, and because the description doesn’t say how outside apps get into your EHR, it raises the top of the range. If yours has no way in, connecting stops being ordinary work, and this version may not be possible at all.
With the portal gone, paying by card is the biggest piece left, at about $6,500, unless connecting to your EHR turns out to be more than ordinary work.
What does custom software for a clinic’s staff cost?
$38,000 – $55,000 over 14–20 weeks, for a web tool that tracks referrals as they come in and the insurance approval each one needs. It runs in the browser, since everybody using it sits at a desk.
The front desk logs each referral as it arrives, uploads the referral letter, and records where the insurance approval stands.
Clinicians see their own new referrals and which approvals have come through.
The practice manager gets reports on where referrals come from and which approvals are still waiting.
Three kinds of staff, each on their own screens and permissions, are worth $11,500 against one kind of user who sees everything. The practice manager alone is $6,500, more than the reports the manager reads, at $5,000. Uploading letters is $3,000.
Kinds of user outweigh any one feature here too, as on the operations platform.
Do you need a patient app if your EHR already has a patient portal?
Not for anything the portal already does. The federal certification program for health IT has a criterion, 45 CFR 170.315(e)(1), that patients can view, download and send their health information online. If your EHR is certified to it, it can show patients their health information.
Find out what your EHR’s portal lets patients do today, and cross those things off your list. If it shows them their health information, an app built only for that pays again for something you have. If the portal already takes payments, bill pay comes off the patient app above at about $5,500. Reminders are about $2,000.
What’s left is the app worth pricing, and writing it down is what a brief is for.
A patient app with its own staff portal costs $47,000 – $67,000, and the portal is the biggest piece of it. Sent to your EHR in place of a portal, the same app is $34,000 – $49,000, if the EHR has a documented way for outside apps to connect. A web tool for the clinic’s staff is $38,000 – $55,000.
All three carry HIPAA from the start. If your EHR’s portal does part of the job, price the app for the rest.
FAQ
Questions about healthcare app costs
How much does a developer charge for an app?
For a whole app, the number to work with is the project’s price. A patient app for one medical practice, with booking, bill pay, reminders and a staff portal, comes to $47,000 – $67,000 with HIPAA designed in. What moves the price of any app covers the parts every build shares, healthcare or not.
What is the cost of AI in healthcare?
Inside a healthcare app, an AI feature is priced like any other piece of the build. Add one to a clinic’s referral-tracking tool that reads each referral letter as it’s uploaded and fills in the patient’s details for the front desk to check, and the estimator adds about $5,500 to a tool already priced with HIPAA. Adding AI to an app you already run has a page of its own.
How much does medical software cost?
For custom software a practice’s staff use, a web tool where the front desk logs referrals, clinicians see approvals and the practice manager gets reports is $38,000 – $55,000 with HIPAA. The EHR at the center of a practice is a product you buy, and nothing on this site prices it.
Is owning an app profitable?
The estimator can’t answer that. It prices what an app costs, and whether one pays for itself depends on numbers it never sees, like how many of your patients would use it. The cost side, for a patient app for one practice, is $47,000 – $67,000 to build with HIPAA, and keeping it running adds a yearly figure.
How long does it take to build a healthcare app?
15–22 weeks for a patient app with its own staff portal, 13–20 weeks for the same app feeding the practice’s EHR, and 14–20 weeks for a web tool for the clinic’s staff, all with HIPAA. The EHR version’s weeks assume the EHR has a documented way for outside apps to connect.
Does a dental or physical therapy app cost the same as one for a doctor’s office?
For the same screens, yes. The estimator prices who uses an app and what they do in it, and it has no setting for the specialty. A dental office’s patient app with booking, bill pay, reminders and a staff portal is the same $47,000 – $67,000 with HIPAA.